favour coming from eight to four, for four
dollars and eighty-five cents. And yesterday she said she couldn't come
to clean any more on Saturdays. I'm sick and tired of it."

Raymond shook a sympathetic head. "Same way down at the store. Seems
everything's that way now. You can't get help and you can't get goods.
You ought to hear our customers. Yesterday I thought I'd go clear out of
my nut, trying to pacify them."

Cora inserted the entering wedge, deftly. "Goodness knows I love my
home. But the way things are now ..."

"Yeh," Ray said, absently. When he spoke like that Cora knew that the
invisible rim was revolving in his mind. In another moment he would be
off to the little cabinet in the bathroom where he kept his tools and
instruments.

She widened the opening. "I noticed as I passed to-day that those new
one-room kitchenette apartments on Sheridan will be ready for occupancy
October first." He was going toward the door. "They say they're
wonderful."

"Who wants to live in one room, anyway?"

"It's really two rooms--and the kitchenette. There's the living
room--perfectly darling--and a sort of combination breakfast room and
kitchen. The breakfast room is partitioned off with sort of cupboards so
that it's really another room. And so handy!"

"How'd you know?"

"I went in--just to look at them--with one of the girls."

Until then he had been unconscious of her guile. But now, suddenly,
struck by a hideous suspicion--"Say, looka here. If you think----"

"Well, it doesn't hurt to look at 'em, does it!"

A week later. "Those kitchenette apartments on Sheridan are almost all
gone. One of the girls was looking at one on the sixth floor. There's a
view of the lake. The kitchen's the sweetest thing. All white enamel.
And the breakfast room thing is done in Italian."

"What d'you mean--done in Italian?"

"Why--uh--Italian period furniture, you know. Dark and rich. The living
room's the same. Desk, and table, and lamps."

"Oh, they're furnished?"

"Complete. Down to the kettle covers and the linen and all. The work
there would just be play. All the comforts of a home, with none of the
terrible aggravations."

"Say, look here, Coral, we don't want to go to work and live in any one
room. You wouldn't be happy. Why, we'd feel cooped up. No room to
stretch.... Why, say, how about the beds? If there isn't a bedroom how
about the beds? Don't people sleep in those places?"

"There are Murphy beds, silly."