in it to care for her husband, and do the family wash,
sent to and fro by express, while she took the second girl with her as
maid. In the first days of September, when the most enterprising of the
fresh vegetables were beginning to appear on the table, and the
mosquitoes were going, and the smell of old potatoes in the cellar and
rats in the walls was airing out, and she was getting used to the
peculiar undulations of her bed, she took the little teethers back to
town with her; and when she found her husband in the comfortable
dimensions of their own house, with melons and berries and tender steak,
and rich cream (such as never comes on "pure milk"), and hot and cold
baths, and no flies, she could not help feeling that he had been very
selfish. Now she understood, at least, why he never failed on Monday
morning to wake in time for the stage to carry him to the station, and
she said, No more farm-board for her if she knew it.

In those idyllic days, while they were making their way, and counting
the cost of every step as if it were the proverbial first step, the next
step for Lindora was a large boarding-house for the summer. She tried
it first in the country, and she tried it next at the seaside, with the
same number of feet of piazza in both cases, and with no distinct
difference except in the price. It was always dearer at the seaside, but
if it had been better she should not have thought it so dear. Yet, as it
was dearer, she could not help thinking it was better; and there was the
beach for the teethers to dig in, and there was an effect of superior
fashion in the gossipers on the piazza, one to every three of the three
hundred feet of the piazza, rocking and talking, and guessing at the
yachts in the offing, and then bathing and coming out to lie on the sand
and dry their hair.

At the farm she had paid seven dollars a week for herself, and
half-price for the children; at the country boarding-house she had paid
ten for herself, and again half-price for the children; at the seaside
boarding-house the rate for her was fourteen dollars, and nine for the
children and the maid. Everybody on the piazza said it was very cheap,
but to Lindora it was so dear that she decided for Florindo that they
could not go on keeping the house open and the cook in it just for him,
as the expressage on the wash took away all the saving in that. If she
allowed him to sleep in the house, he could pick up his meals for much
less than the