praised him.

Her part was harder. She never knew what it was to be free from
financial concern. She fretted and contrived until the misspending
of five cents seemed a genuine calamity to her, She walked to
cheap markets, and endured the casual scorn of cheap clerks. She
ironed Bert's ties and pressed his trousers, saving car fares by
walking, saving hospitality by letting her old friends see how
busy and absorbed she was, saving food by her native skill and
ingenuity.

But they lived royally, every meal was a triumph, every hour
strangely bright. Of cooking meat, especially the more choice
cuts, Nancy did little this year, but there was no appetizing
combination of vegetables, soups, salads, hot breads, and iced
drinks that she did not try. Bert said, and he meant it, that he
had never lived so well in his life, and certainly the walls of
the little apartment in the "George Eliot" were packed with joy.
When their microscopic accounts balanced at the end of the week,
they celebrated with a table-d'hete dinner down town--dinners from
which they walked home gloriously happy, Nancy wondering over and
over again HOW the restaurateurs could manage it, Bert, over his
cigar, estimating carefully: "Well, Sweet, there wasn't much cost
to that soup, delicious as it was, and I suppose they buy that
sole down at the docks, in the early morning..."

When Nancy had learned that she could live without a telephone,
and had cut down the milk bill, and limited Bert to one butter
ball per meal, she found she could manage easily. In August they
gave two or three dinners, and Nancy displayed her pretty table