not spend more than one earns, long. He insisted
upon paying up all the old bills and establishing a monthly budget.
When, after the rent had been deducted from the sum he expected to earn,
Milly proved to him that they could not live on what was left, he
whistled and said he must "dig it up somehow," and he did. He became
indefatigably industrious in picking up odd dollars, extending his funny
column, doing posters, and making extra sketches for the sporting sheet.
In spite of these added fives and tens, they usually exceeded the budget
by a third, and when Jack looked grave, Milly of course explained just
how exceptional the circumstances had been.

It is not worth while to go into the budgetary details of this
particular matrimonial venture. Other story-tellers have done that with
painful literalness, and nothing is drearier than the dead accounts of
the butcher and baker, necessary as they are. The essential truths of
domestic finance are very simple, and invariable: in the last analysis
they come to one horn of the eternal dilemma,--fewer wants or more
dollars. In America it is usually the second horn of the dilemma that
the husband valiantly embraces--it seems the easier one at the time, at
least the more comfortable horn upon which to be impaled. Milly was
convinced that the first horn was impossible, if they were to "live
decently." Bragdon began to think they might do better in New York,
where the market for incidental art was larger and the pay better. Milly
was eager for the venture. But both hesitated to cut themselves off from
a sure, if lean, subsistence. The _Star_ raised him during the
presidential campaign, when he was quite happy in caricaturing the
Democratic ass and the wide-mouthed Democratic candidate. (They always
had a tender feeling for the gentleman after that!) All in all, he made
nearly twenty-five hundred dollars the first year, and that was much
more than he had expected. But he found that even in those years of low
prices it was a small income for two--as Milly pointed out.

However, money was not their only concern. The young wife was properly
ambitious for her husband.

"It isn't so much the money," she told Eleanor Kemp. "I don't want Jack
to sink into mere newspaper work, though he's awfully clever at it. But
it leads nowhere, you know. I want him to be a real artist; he's got the
talent. And if he succeeds as a painter, it pays so much better. Just
think! That Varnot man charges fif