o, bearing her own signature.

"Mary, what _shall_ we do?" was her despairing question, as the full
truth became distinct to her mind.

"You say we have sunk more than two thousand dollars in two years?"

"Yes, my child."

"And have had all our hard labor for nothing?" Mary continued, and
her voice trembled as she thought of how much she had gone through
in that time.

"Yes."

"Something must be wrong, mother. Let us do what we should have done
at first, make a careful estimate of our expenses."

"Well."

"It costs us just ten dollars each week for marketing--and I know
that our groceries are at least that, including flour; that you see
makes twenty dollars, and we only get twenty-eight dollars for our
eight boarders. Our rent will bring our expenses up to that. And
then there are servants' wages, fuel, our own clothes, and the boys'
schooling, besides what we lose every year, and the hundred little
expenses which cannot be enumerated."

"Bless me, Mary! No wonder we have gone behindhand."

"Indeed, mother, it is not."

"We have acted very blindly, Mary."

"Yes, we have; but we must do so no longer. Let us give up our
boarders, and move into a smaller house."

"But what shall we do Mary? Our money will soon dwindle away."

"We must do something for a living, mother, that is true. But if we
cannot now see what we shall do, that is no reason why we should go
on as we are. Our rent, you know, takes away from us eight dollars a
week. We can get a house large enough for our own purposes at three
dollars a week, or one hundred and fifty dollars a year, I am sure,
thus saving five dollars a week there, and that money would buy all
the plain food our whole family would eat."

"But it will never do, Mary, for us to go to moving into a little
bit of a pigeon-box of a house."

"Mother, if we don't get into a cheaper house and husband our
resources, we shall soon have no house to live in!" said Mary, with
unwonted energy.

"Well, child, perhaps you are right; but I can't bear the thought of
it," Mrs. Turner replied. "And any how, I can't see what we are
going to do then."

"We ought to do what we see to be right, mother, had we not?" Mary
asked, looking affectionately into her mother's face.

"I suppose so, Mary."

"Won't it be right for us to reduce our expenses, and make the most
of what we have left?"

"It certainly will, Mary."

"Then let us do what seems to be right, and we shall see further, I