"Besides this have croquettes, and if you are short of meat for those, put in a little boiled rice. And when your meat gives out altogether, try this cheap and very nice Mexican dish: put in a saucepan a quarter of a pound of dried beef cut up rather small, with a cup of tomato and a quarter of a cup of rice, a little onion and seasoning; cook till the rice is soft. The rest of the beef in the box, if you buy it that way, you can broil; it is like delicate ham.
"I should think all these things ought to make it easy for you to at least begin to manage; afterwards you can go on and have anything more you can find to make that is good and cheap."
"I think somebody once told me that twice-cooked food was not wholesome; do you really believe it is a good idea to have warmed-over things for dinners?"
"Think of the French once more! They have the greatest number of made dishes in the world and they never have dyspepsia. And then you are to have warmed-over things only every other night, at the worst, and not always then, by any means, and I am sure you will thrive on them."
"One thing more; do you believe it pays to spend so much time and thought and all that on doing over things? Don't you think you might as well buy fresh ones as to put so much strength in these?"
"My dear girl, if you are going to save your money you must expend your time and ingenuity in doing so. I don't believe in wasting strength, but I do believe in using it wisely in order to save buying unnecessarily. But you will learn that as you go on. Now do you think I have told you enough about meat to enable you to keep the wolf from the door?"
"I do, indeed; I only hope Fred will consent to eat these things. If he finds out he is dining on left-overs and dried beef and scrags of mutton, I am afraid he will think me a pretty poor sort of housekeeper."
"Do you suppose any mere man is going to know that he is eating cheap meat unless you actually tell him so in plain words? Not at all; he will eat all these delicacies and declare that they are far better than roasts of beef and spring lamb, and wonder how you can possibly afford to have such good things on your little housekeeping income. You will simply be covered with glory, and he will never know how you are deceiving him for his own good."
"I think it is going to be dreadfully trying to live on an allowance, anyway. It will be just like being shipwrecked on a raft, and having exactly so much hardtack and so many ounces of water doled out to you each day. If you eat any of your to-morrow's provisions you won't be alive when a ship sights you at last. In other words, you will never get your salary raised if you don't live within what you have now."