he budget allowed. David made a great show of taking the
address and promised to inspect the "find" on the morrow.

"Let's really see it," Shirley suggested, as they rode home on the
front seat of a trolley-car.

"We'd better not," said David, clinging desperately to a dwindling
remnant of caution.

"Not to take it, of course. Only to remind us that there _are_ pretty
places in the world--waiting for us later on." She snuggled closer to
him.

In the morning, of course, they saw the apartment. And it was almost
uncanny, Shirley declared, how exactly it matched what she had had in
mind. She proceeded to place in fancy David's chairs and desk and
lamps, the dining-room furniture that was to be Maizie's wedding gift
and the mahogany bedroom suite the Jim Blaisdells had given them. She
went into ecstasies over the china closet, the dainty bathroom, the
clean convenient kitchen.

"David, can't you _see_ it? With a few small rugs and plain
inexpensive curtains and the pictures we have it would be a gem. We'd
never feel shabby here. And with the hardwood floors and tiled bath
and that kitchen the housework would be so easy." She sighed
rapturously.

"We'd better get away. My mouth is beginning to water. I'm sorry,
dear." He kissed her to prove it. "But we oughtn't even to consider
it."

But at the door she stopped and looked back--a risky business, as Lot's
wife once proved. She surveyed the place with a lingering wishful
glance.

"I wonder if we couldn't make up the difference in rent by cutting down
somewhere else. We could cut the extras in half. And I won't need any
new clothes for a whole year--not a single stitch. By that time--"
She paused, as it seemed for a reply.

"Do you want it so much, Shirley?"

"Oh, if we only could do it, David!"

David, too, did sums in subtraction and found that, with care, he could
cut his expenses down-town.

They took the apartment.

In fact, there came a time when David remembered, with a sickening
qualm, that in almost every item they had stepped little or far beyond
the limits of their budget. They did it because the disappointment
written on Shirley's pretty face when something on which she had set
her heart seemed beyond their reach, was more than he could bear.

But the old cat was still playing. It was a "boom year": the
beginning, said the wise statesmen and newspapers, of an era of
unprecedented prosperity. The city was growing rapidly. Arc