far below the _real_ cost of what is inferior.

"It is better--much better," said I to Mrs. Jones, the other day.

"Better!" was her reply. "Yes, indeed, a thousand times better to
have good things at once. Cheap furniture is dearest in the end.
Every housekeeper ought to know this in the beginning. If we had
known it, see what we would have saved."

"If _I_ had known it, you mean," said I.

My wife looked kindly, not triumphantly, into my face, and smiled.
When she again spoke, it was on another subject.






CHAPTER VI.

LIVING AT A CONVENIENT DISTANCE.





THERE are few of us who do not feel, at some time in life, the
desire for change. Indeed, change of place corresponding, as it
does, in outward nature, to change of state in the mind, it is not