eeping talents or failings dropped upon the hall floor. She
rushed out, collected them, and retired to the dining-room hearthrug
to meet her responsibilities.

She knew the sum total was all wrong; her mother's tradesmen's books
never reached this figure. Yet people must eat, mustn't they? And wash
with soap? And have boot polish, and cleaning things, and candles for
their dinner-table?

She asked herself, as so many young wives have done, half-sorrowing,
half-injured: "But what have we _had_? I've been awf'ly careful.
I couldn't have managed with less. I shall tell Osborn that it simply
can't be done for less--"

She shut the books one by one. "But it must," she said to herself.
"Our income is--"

She figured out, with pencil and paper and much distaste, their weekly
income; she compared it with the sum total of the tradesmen's books,
and to that one must add rent, and travel, and holidays and doctor's
expenses.

Doctor's expenses? Cut that item out. One must never be ill, that's
all.

She was glad she was going to meet Osborn that afternoon, and have tea
with him in the West End; he was to beg off early specially for it.

The flat seemed very silent. What a deserted place! It would be nice
to go out and see someone, speak to someone.

She went to lie down.

She lay on her pink quilt, and began on that castle again. It was a
fine place, a real family seat. While she built, she manicured her
finger nails, looking at them critically. She had not begun to spoil
them yet, thanks to the rubber gloves and the housemaid's gloves with
which Osborn had declared his eternal readiness to provide her. No one
would feel it more deeply than Osborn if one of those slim fingers
were burned or soiled or roughened ever so little.

She had a few coppers only in her private purse, but they would carry
her to Osborn, the legal fount of supply. Out into a fine afternoon
she stepped lightly, and the admiring hall porter watched her go. He
was not so certain of her, though, for he had seen many young brides
pass through his portals, in and out every day, ridden always by some
small fretting care till they trembled at the sight of someone who was
always looking, through their ageing clothes, at the ill-kept secrets
of their pockets. He had entered in his memoranda that the Kerrs
rented only a forty-pound flat.

Heedless of the hall porter, Marie was away upon her joyous errand.
She was very young, very healthy, and she looked ra