"You won't deserve to have it raised if you can't live within what you have now; so much is sure. But you won't have any trouble. Remember to keep within your week's allowance, not your daily one; there's comfort in that for you. You can see that one day you may buy two days' food at once, and so spend part or all of the dollar that properly belongs to to-morrow; but the end of the week straightens that out comfortably, and if that account comes out all right you cannot run over the whole."
"I really believe we had better be vegetarians and live on pea soup and lentils and peanuts and such things. Being both cheap and filling, what more could one ask?"
"Well, vegetarians have taught us all a great deal. I think, however, that men who have been brought up to have meat at least once a day do not take kindly to a diet which cuts it out altogether. But I am sure they are far better off without too much meat, and if they can be made to think they are getting as much as usual when really they are getting only half as much, that is a distinct gain. Always remember what I told you, that they do not inquire too closely exactly what they are getting to eat if only it is good; that is something to count among your mercies."
"Have you any idea what you spend for meat a day?"
"Yes; we have it for dinner only, and, as I explained, I buy enough one day for at least two dinners. Dividing the two or possibly three pounds up in that way, of course it makes the daily total absurdly small; I suppose it averages only about twenty cents,—probably less."
"That does seem impossible, except as I review the baked hash and other dinner meats you mentioned. And with this enormous expense you pay for vegetables, milk, eggs, butter, and all the rest, and yet put pennies in the kitchen bank?"
"Of course. I buy meat one day, vegetables the next, flour the third, and so on; that is the explanation."
"Well, I see that it is not quite as impossible as one would think at first sight, anyway."
"You are only in the first stages of housekeeping yet, so wait awhile, my dear, before you make up your mind one way or the other. Now get your hat and we will go down-town and buy the dinner for to-night,—pot-roast, I think, for one thing."
"Pot-roast to-night; to-morrow the remains of yesterday's mutton; the next day the beef again,—in soufflé, possibly, provided Dick comes home to-night with a good appetite, in which case little will be left."