Dr. Brooks and Mr. Fox were sitting on the stairs with
her, she took it out and looked at herself and rubbed some rouge on her
cheeks."

Anne had a vision of the three of them sitting on the stairs. "Well,"
she said, in a fierce little fashion, "I don't know what the world is
coming to."

Beulah cared little about Eve's world. For the moment Eric filled her
horizon, and the dress she was to get to make herself pretty for him.

"Shall we go Saturday?" she asked.

Anne, rummaging in the drawer of her desk, produced a small and shabby
pocketbook. She shook the money out and counted it. "With the check that
Uncle Rod sent me," she said, "there's enough for a really lovely frock.
But I don't know whether I ought to spend it."

"Why not?"

"Everybody ought to save something--I am teaching my children to have
penny banks--and yet I go on spending and spending with nothing to show
for it."

Beulah was quite placid. "I don't see why you should save. Some day you
will get married, and then you won't have to."

"If a woman marries a poor man she ought to be careful of finances. She
has to think of her children and of their future."

Beulah shrugged. "What's the use of looking so far ahead? And 'most any
husband will see that his wife doesn't get too much to spend."

Before Anne went to bed that night she put a part of her small store of
money into a separate compartment of her purse. She would buy a cheaper
frock and save herself the afterpangs of extravagance. And the penny
banks of the children would no longer accuse her of inconsistency!

The shopping expedition proved a strenuous one. Anne had fixed her mind
on certain things which proved to be too expensive. "You go for your
fitting," she said to Beulah desperately, as the afternoon waned, "and I
will take a last look up Charles Street. We can meet at the train."

The way which she had to travel was a familiar one, but its charm held
her--the street lights glimmered pale gold in the early dusk, the crowd
swung along in its brisk city manner toward home. Beyond the shops was
the Cardinal's house. The Monument topped the hill; to its left the
bronze lions guarded the great square; to the right there was the thin
spire of the Methodist Church.

She had an hour before train time and she lingered a little, stopping at
this window and that, and all the time the money which she had elected to
save burned a hole in her pocket.

For there were such things to buy! Pas