s continually saying to his wife:

"You really might be more liberal, as we have no children, and never
spend our income."

"You don't know what may happen," she used to reply. "It is better to
have too much than too little."

She was a little woman of about forty, very active, rather hasty,
wrinkled, very neat and tidy, and with a very short temper.

Her husband very often used to complain of all the privations she made
him endure; some of them were particularly painful to him, as they
touched his vanity.

He was one of the upper clerks in the War Office, and only kept on there
in obedience to his wife's wish, so as to increase their income, which
they did not nearly spend.

For two years he had always come to the office with the same old patched
umbrella, to the great amusement of his fellow-clerks. At last he got
tired of their jokes, and insisted upon his wife buying him a new one.
She bought one for eight francs and a half, one of those cheap articles
which large houses sell as an advertisement. When the others in the
office saw the article, which was being sold in Paris by the thousands,
they began their jokes again, and Oreille had a dreadful time of it with
them, and they even made a song about it, which he heard from morning
till night all over the immense building.

Oreille was very angry, and peremptorily told his wife to get him a new
one, a good silk one, for twenty francs, and to bring him the bill, so
that he might see that it was all right.

She bought him one for eighteen francs, and said, getting red with anger
as she gave it to her husband:

"This will last you for five years at least."

Oreille felt quite triumphant, and obtained a small ovation at the
office with his new acquisition.

When he went home in the evening, his wife said to him, looking at the
umbrella uneasily:

"You should not leave it fastened up with the elastic; it will very
likely cut the silk. You must take care of it, for I shall not buy you a
new one in a hurry."

She took it, unfastened it, and remained dumbfounded with astonishment
and rage; in the middle of the silk there was a hole as big as a
sixpenny-piece; it had been made with the end of a cigar.

"What is that?" she screamed.

Her husband replied quietly, without looking at it: "What is it? What do
you mean?"

She was choking with rage, and could hardly get out a word.

"You--you--have burnt--your umbrella! Why--you must be--mad! Do you wish
to rui