"Oh, no, she can't get along with any less. Still, it will be a little hard to spare just now. I feel our poverty most when it touches the children."
"It is a good deal, but I think it's worth the sacrifice. Beatrice has looked white and worn lately, and we can't afford to let her be sick."
"I hadn't noticed it," said Mr. Lee anxiously. "Do you think she's not well?"
"It's heart sickness as much as anything else. Bea has never seemed happy since we moved onto Cherry Street. She misses the old home and the old friends. She was not so easily reconciled as Wilhelmina and Theodore."
"Then I think more than ever that we must manage it. I shall not regret the effort if she comes back physically improved. After that I'll trust the mental and moral indisposition to take care of themselves. Bea is not naturally pessimistic."
"But I don't see exactly how we are to arrange it. We are living so near to our income just now; and I don't know how to economise more closely than I have been doing."
Mr. Lee made a suggestion that Beatrice did not hear, to which his wife replied decidedly:
"No, dear man, you can't get along without that. A minister can't afford to go shabby. We'll find some other way of saving. I can let Maggie go home for a month or two. Beatrice's going away will make the family smaller, and I'm sure Wilhelmina and I could do the housework."
"No indeed." The minister's voice was most emphatic. "That would be extravagant economy. You would be sick in a month. I can spare the money, I'm sure, but I shall have to give up a cherished plan to do it. I hoped to be able to rent a horse and buggy for you two days a week this summer. You don't get enough of out of doors, and it tires you so to walk."
There was a glad little note in Mrs. Lee's reply that went straight to Bea's heart.