clue. I cannot tell you how I admire and approve. Still it makes me
thoughtful sometimes.

No doubt you will believe that we are being drawn together by sharing these
hardships. Well, yes. In a way. And yet I don't feel easy about it. We are
quite in sympathy, but there is a difference in our point of view. Mine, I
affirm, is the nobler. I economize, although I loathe it; while she, I am
convinced, is beginning to like it. I don't mean to say that she does it on
purpose, but that phrase may give you an idea what I mean. I sometimes
wonder wistfully if the hand that put that ugly new steel contraption at
the back of the fire to save the coal is really the hand that I wooed and
won ten years ago. I see in her the steady growth of an implacable
conscience. In moments of depression I have a horrid feeling that she
always wanted to do this sort of thing and never got a real chance till
now.

We were extraordinarily happy before the War. We were not at all hard up
and we had no compunctions about spending money. But now--I wonder how
long the War will last? What I am afraid of is the formation of habits. I
am already guarding against it by talking about all the things that we are
going to do after the War. She quite agrees with me about them, but she
isn't enthusiastic. I put my claims pretty high. The garden is to be
reconstructed, and I am adding a wing to the house. We are going to travel
first, and I am not sure that we shan't have a new cook. And we are to have
an Airedale and an Axminster, and a Stilton and a new Panama.

As a matter of fact that is all bluff on my part. I only want to have
something in hand to bargain with. If I can ever get back to the _status
quo ante_ I will not ask for annexations.