Sunday luncheon in their tiny home, when they first seriously
discussed finances; not theoretical finances, but finances as
bounded on one side by Bert's worn, brown leather pocket-book, and
on the other by his bank-book, with its confusing entries in black
and red ink.

Here on the table were seventeen dollars and eighty cents. Nancy
had flattened the bills, and arranged the silver in piles, as they
talked. This was Sunday; Bert would be paid on Saturday next.
Could Nancy manage on that?

Nancy felt a vague alarm. But she had been a wage earner herself.
She rose to the situation at once.

"Manage what, Bert? If you mean just meals, of course I can! But I
won't have this much every week for meals ...?"

Bert took out a fountain pen, and reached for a blank envelope.

"Do you mind working it out?--I think it's such fun!"

"I love it!" Nancy brought her brightest face to the problem. "Now
let's see--what have we? Exactly one hundred a month."

"Thirteen hundred a year," he corrected.

"Yes, but let's not count that extra hundred, Bee!" Nancy, like
all women, had given her new husband a new name. "Let's save that
and have it to blow in, all in a heap, for something special?"