furnishings to "the girls," and gave them the secret of her iced
tea. She told her husband that they got along because he was "so
wonderful"; she felt that no financial tangle could resist Bert's
neatly pencilled little calculations, but Bert praised only her--
what credit to him that he did not complain, when he was the most
fortunate man in the world?

They came to be proud of their achievement. Nancy had Buckley
Pearsall, Bert's chief, and his wife, to dinner, and kindly Mrs.
Pearsall could not enough praise the bride and her management.
Later the Pearsalls asked the young Bradleys down to their Staten
Island home for a week-end. "And think of the pure gain of not
buying a thing for three days!" exulted Nancy, thereby convulsing
her lord. She brought back late corn, two jars of Mrs. Pearsall's
preserved peaches, a great box of grapes to be made into jelly,
and a basket of tomatoes. Bert said that she was a grafter, but he
knew as well as she that Nancy's pleasure in taking the gifts had
given Mrs. Pearsall a genuine joy.

With none of the emergencies they had dreaded, and with many and
unexpected pleasures, the first winter went by. Sometimes Bert got
a theatre pass, sometimes old friends or kinspeople came to town,
and Bert and Nancy went to one of the big hotels to dinner, and
stared radiantly about at the bright lights, and listened to music
again, and were whirled home in a taxicab.

"That party cost your Cousin Edith about twenty-five dollars,"
Nancy, rolling up her hair-net thoughtfully, would say late at
night, with a suppressed yawn. "The dinner check was fourteen, and
the tickets eight--it cost her more than twenty-five dollars!