it would keep you quiet."

"You see, I can't help it, can I? Keeping quiet doesn't ask you for
this other half-crown, and I've got to ask you. I can't help it."

"I daresay not," he admitted reluctantly. "But--"

"Can I have it?" she asked doggedly.

"Oh, take it!" he flared, flung half-a-crown on the table, rose, and
went out. She sat for a while looking at the half-crown, then she took
it in her hand, and wanted to pitch it into the street for the first
beggar to profit by, but, remembering that she was a beggar too, she
kept it.

Osborn entered into further discussion of the matter in a reasonable
vein.

"Half-a-crown a week's six pound ten a year. Sure you can't manage
without?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, lots of women have to--to--manage."

"There's a limit even to management."

"I suppose there is. Very well."

"You mean I'm to have it?"

"All right."

"Thank you very much, dear," said Marie very slowly after a while.

"You don't seem in a particular hurry to say it."

"Why should I say it?"

"What! when I've just arranged to give you six pound ten--"

"To feed your daughter."

"Oh, well--"

"Anyway, I _have_ said it. I've said 'Thank you very much,'
haven't I? Do you want me to show more gratitude?"

"It beats me to think what's come over women."

They sat on either side of their hearth looking at one another in
unconcealed bewilderment.

"If you cared to let me make out a budget, Osborn," she said suddenly,
"I think we could arrange it all better. So much for everything, you
know."

"Oh, yes, I know! I know all about it, thanks! If you want to dole out
my pocket-money, my dear, I'm off.... I'm completely off it! No, thank
you. I'll keep my hands on my own income."

"I only meant--"

"Women never seem satisfied," said Osborn wrathfully.

As he looked at her sitting there, thin and fair and reserved as she
never used to be, with the sheen of her glossy hair almost vanished,
and all of her pretty insouciance gone, he saw no more the gay girl,
the wifely comrade, whom he had married. In her place sat the
immemorial hag, the married man's bane, the blood-sucker, the enemy,
the asker.

She had taken from him a sum equivalent to twice his weekly
tobacco-money.

The sacrifice of _all_ his tobacco would not provide for that red
and crumpled baby lying in its fine basket. He took that as a
comparison, with no intention of sacrificing his tobacco; but it just
gave one the figures