that forty dollars every week was riches, but between Junior's
demands, and the little leakage of Esmeralda's wages, and her
hearty lunch twice a week, and the milk, and the necessarily less-
careful marketing, they seemed to be just where they were before.

"There must be some way of living that we can afford!" mused
Nancy, one March morning at the breakfast table, when the world
looked particularly bright to the young Bradleys. Junior, curly-
headed, white-clad, and excited over a hard crust of toast, sat
between his parents, who interrupted their meal to kiss his fat
fists, the dewy back of his neck under the silky curls, and even
the bare toes that occasionally appeared on the board.

This was Sunday, and for months it had been the custom to weigh
Junior on Sunday, a process that either put Nancy and Bert into a
boastful mood for the day, or reduced the one to tearful silence,
and the other to apprehensive bravado. But now the baby was
approaching his first anniversary, and it was perfectly obvious
that his weight was no longer a matter of concern. He was so
large, so tall, and so fat that one of Nancy's daily satisfactions
was to have other mothers, in the park, ask her his age. She
looked at him with fond complacency rather than apprehension now,
feeling that every month and week of his life made him a little
more sure of protracted existence, and herself a little more safe
as his mother.

"How do you mean--afford?" Bert asked. "We pay our bills, and
we're not in debt."

"When I say 'afford,'" Nancy answered, "I mean that we do not live