to
bother with these horrible creatures that are all you can get usually?"

Paul laughed at the fancy. "That's a high ambition for my wife, I must
say!"

"We'd have better things to eat even than Ellen gives us," said Lydia
pensively. "If I had a little more time to put on it, I could do
wonders, I'm sure of it."

"I don't doubt that," said her husband gallantly; "but did you ever know
anybody who _was_ her own cook?"

"Well, not except in between times, when they couldn't get anybody
else," confessed Lydia. "But lots of people I know who do go through the
motions of keeping one would be better off without one. They can't
afford it, and--Oh, I wish we were poorer!"

Paul was highly amused by this flight of fancy. "But we're as poor as
poverty already," he reminded her.

"We're poor for buying hundred-dollar broadcloth tailor-made suits for
me, and cut glass for the table, but we'd have plenty if I could wear
ready-made serge at--"

Paul laughed outright. "Haven't you ever noticed, my dear, that the
people who wear ready-made serge are the ones who could really
comfortably afford to wear calico wrappers? It goes right up and down
the scale that way. Everybody is trying to sing a note above what he
can."

"I know it does--but does it _have_ to? Wouldn't it be better if
everybody just--why doesn't somebody begin--"

"It's the law of progress, of upward growth," pronounced Paul.

Lydia was impressed by the pontifical sound of this, though she ventured
faintly: "Well, but does progress always mean broadcloth and cut glass?"

"_We_ have the wherewithal to cultivate our minds!" said Paul, laughing
again. "Weren't the complete works of the American essayists among our
wedding presents!" He referred to an old joke between them, at which
Lydia laughed loyally, and the talk went on lightly until the meal was
over.

As they walked away from the table together Lydia said to herself,
"Now--now--" but Paul began to laugh as he told an incident of
Madeleine's light-hearted, high-handed tyranny over her elderly fiance,
and it seemed impossible for Lydia to bring out her story of mean and
ugly tragedy.

As usual the evening was a lively one. Some acquaintances from the
"younger married set" of Bellevue dropped in for a game of cards,
Madeleine and "old Pete" Lowdor came out to talk over the plans for
their new handsome house at the end of the street and at Paul's
suggestion Lydia hastily got together a chafing-dish supp