paying in commissions to agents?

GIBSON: Yes, I did.

NORA: Why, I can't believe it! Did you know that you paid them twenty
per cent. on each piano? Over thirty-seven dollars!

GIBSON: Yes.

NORA: But wasn't it thrown away? I can't understand how you kept the
factory going so long as you did, with such losses. Why, don't you know
it amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? When we found it
out we couldn't see how you made both ends meet, and we thought there
must have been some mistake, and you'd never realized what advantage
these agents were taking of you.

GIBSON: Yes, I knew what they got.

NORA [_triumphantly_]: We cut those commissions from thirty-seven
dollars--to _twelve_! And that's just one more item among our economies.
Now do you wonder at the success we're making?

GIBSON: And your profits have been--satisfactory?

NORA: The very first month our profits were _four thousand dollars_ more
than the last month you were there!

GIBSON: That's the month you say you cut out four thousand seven
hundred dollars' worth of advertising.