n talk
intelligently. We'll say we can't leave the kid nights--"

"We can buy magazines and read up on plays. We'll talk well enough
if we do that, and people won't know we haven't been. Put down:
'Magazines for plays.'"

He did it quite seriously. Do we seem very amusing to you? So
anxious lest we should betray our economies--so impressed with our
social "position" and what people might think! It is funny enough to
me, looking back; but it was bitter business then.

I set myself to playing the devoted and absorbed young mother. But
it was a long, long time before it became the sweetest of realities.
I cried the first time I refused a bridge game to "stay with baby";
and I carried a sore heart those long spring afternoons when I
pushed his carriage conspicuously up and down the avenue while the
other women motored past me out for tea at the club. Yet those long
walks were the best thing that ever happened to me. I had time to
think, for one thing; and I gained splendid health, losing the
superfluous flesh I was beginning to carry, and the headaches that
usually came after days of lunching and bridge and dining.

I fell into the habit, too, of going around by the market, merely to
have an objective, and buying the day's supplies. The first month of
that habit my bills showed a decrease of $16.47. I shall always
remember that sum, because it is certainly the biggest I have ever
seen. I began to ask the prices of things; and I made my first faint
effort at applying our game of substitution to the food problem, a
thing which to me is still one of the most fascinating factors in
housekeeping.

One afternoon in late summer, I found a delightful little bungalow
in process of building, on a side street not so _very_ far from the
proper avenue. I investigated idly, and found that the rent was
thirty dollars less than we were paying. Yet even then I hesitated.

It was Max who had the courage to decide.

"The only thing we are doing without is the address," he said, "And
that isn't a loss that looks like $360 to me."

All that fall and winter we kept doggedly at our game of
substitution. Max bought a ready-made Tuxedo, and I ripped out the
label and sewed in one from a good tailor. I carried half a dozen
dresses from the dyer's to a woman who evolved three very decent
gown