The gleam of the fire, or perhaps a fancy out of the far-beyond,
lighted her eyes as she answered,

"We began on four hundred and fifty a year; and we were perfectly--"

"Yes, but you forget the parsonage; that was rent free!"

"Four hundred and fifty with rent free--and we had everything we
could--"

"You forget again that we had n't even one of our four boys."

Her gaze rested tenderly upon the little chairs between her and the
fire, just where the boys had left them at the end of their listening
an hour before.

"If you had allowed me," she went on, "I was going to say how glad we
ought to be that we are not quite so rich as--"

"We should like to be?" I questioned.

"'A purchase'"--she was reading again--"'is but a purchase, now that
you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph.
Do you not remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you,
till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare--and
all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home
late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we
eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase,
and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the