wife gathered them up with eager trepidation. She had been washing up,
when the books arrived, all the dinner things left over from the night
before, and the breakfast things of this morning, and from the kitchen
she heard and recognised the blunt thump as each record of her
housekeeping 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