capitalist at heart. We certainly haven't needed
him!

CARTER: Oh, everybody was glad to get rid of Hill! Better off without
him--better off without him!

GIBSON: I suppose it was really an economy, his going?

NORA [_smiling_]: It resulted in economy.

GIBSON: Have you made many economies?

NORA: Oh, a great many!

CARTER: Oh, my! Yes!

NORA: Economies! [_Her manner now is indulgent, amused, friendly, almost
pitying._] Mr. Gibson, have you any realization of what you threw away
at that place? Don't be afraid, I'll never bring you the figures. I
wouldn't do such a thing to anybody!

GIBSON: Do you think I was too lavish?

NORA: We couldn't believe it at first. Just what was being thrown away
on advertising, for instance. The bill you paid for the last month you
were there was five thousand dollars!

CARTER: That was the figger! It's certainly a good one on you, Mr.
Gibson.

NORA: We cut that five thousand dollars down to _three hundred_! That
was one item of forty-seven hundred dollars a month saved. Just one
item!

CARTER [_hilariously_]: Quite some item!

NORA [_seriously and gently_]: Five thousand dollars a month to
advertise a piano that sells for only a hundred and eighty-eight
dollars!

CARTER: That's the facts!

NORA: Mr. Gibson, did you really ever have any idea what you were
paying in commissions to agents?

GIBSON: Yes, I did.

NORA: Why, I can't believe it! Did you know that you paid them twenty
per cent. on each piano? Over thirty-seven dollars!

GIBSON: Yes.

NORA: But wasn't it thrown away? I can't understand how you kept the
factory going so long as you did, with such losses. Why, don't you know
it amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? When we found it
out we couldn't see how you made both ends meet, and we thought there
must have been some mistake, and you'd never realized what advantage
these agents were taking of you.

GIBSON: Yes, I knew what they got.

NORA [_triumphantly_]: We cut those commissions from thirty-seven
dollars--to _twelve_! And that's just one more item among our economies.
Now do you wonder at the success we're making?

GIBSON: And your profits have been--satisfactory?

NORA: The very first month our profits were _four thousand dollars_ more
than the last month you were there!

GIBSON: That's the month you say you cut out four thousand seven
hundred dollars' worth of advertising.

NORA: And the next month we cut down the commissions,