rprised me to see her
look so happy, for she had been very quiet and preoccupied for the first
part of the week. So much so, indeed, that I had thought of ordering
smaller roasts for a week or two, and taking her to a Thomas Concert
with the money saved. But this evening she looked as if she did not need
Thomas's orchestra.

"What makes you so bright, my dear?" said I, when I had greeted her.
"Has anything jolly happened?"

"No," said she; "nothing yet, but I am going to make a fire to melt
snow-balls."

Of course I was very anxious to know how she was going to do it, but she
would not tell me. It was a plan that she intended to keep to herself
until she saw how it worked. I did not press her, because she had so few
secrets, and I did not hear anything about this plan until it had been
carried out.

Her scheme was as follows: After thinking over our financial condition
and puzzling her brain to find out some way of bettering it, she
had come to the conclusion that she would make some money by her own
exertions, to help defray our household expenses. She never had made any
money, but that was no reason why she should not begin. It was too bad
that I should have to toil and toil and not make nearly enough money
after all. So she would go to work and earn something with her own
hands.

She had heard of an establishment in the city, where ladies of limited
means, or transiently impecunious, could, in a very quiet and private
way, get sewing to do. They could thus provide for their needs without
any one but the officers of the institution knowing anything about it.

So Euphemia went to this place, and she got some work. It was not a very
large bundle, but it was larger than she had been accustomed to carry,
and, what was perfectly dreadful, it was wrapped up in a newspaper!
When Euphemia told me the story, she said that this was too much for her
courage. She could not go on the cars, and perhaps meet people belonging
to our church, with a newspaper bundle under her arm.

But her genius for expedients saved her from this humiliation. She had
to purchase some sewing-cotton, and some other little things, and when
she had bought them, she handed her bundle to the woman behind the
counter, and asked her if she would not be so good as to have that
wrapped up with the other things. It was a good deal to ask, she knew,
and the woman smiled, for the articles she had bought would not make a
package as large as her hand. Howev