However, money was not the chief thing. He could manage. Let it go.

Having properly impressed her, nothing made Sam feel larger than to
bring her a set of pearl-handled knives,--when she had wanted a dollar
for kitchen tins. His extravagances were not always generosities.
Once, after she had turned her winter-before-last suit and patched new
seats into the boy's flannel drawers, because "times were hard," he
bought a brace of blooded hunting-dogs.

Next day she opened an account at a department store.

With the promptness of the first of the month and the sureness of
death, the bill came. Sam had expressed himself unchecked before she
turned in the doorway. "If you will go over it," she said, with all
her rehearsal unable, after all, to imitate his nonchalance, "you will
find nothing unnecessary. I think there is nothing there for the
dogs."

But her cannon-ball affected him no more than a leaf an elephant; he
did not know he was hit. It was always so.

In his cool way, however, Sam had all the cumulative jealousy of the
primitive male for his long primacy. Some weeks later, when Judith
ordered an overcoat for Sam junior sent home on approval, she found
the store had been instructed to give her no credit.

She got out, with burning face and heart, without the article. Her
first impulse was to shrink from a blow.

But at table that night she recounted her experience: "The very