“Indeed I won’t,” she replied, proudly.
“Father and I finished going over the books to-day with Mackintosh. We’ve got to put on the brakes. I—I hate to tell you,” and he averted his face. “You are so young.”
Margaretta did not reply to him, and, eager to see her face, he presently turned his own.
The sun had set, but she was radiant in a kind of afterglow.
“Margaretta, you don’t understand,” he faltered. “It will be a tremendous struggle for you to give up luxuries to which you have been accustomed, but we’ve either got to come down to bare poles here, or move to a smaller house.”
“What a misfortune!” she said.
His face fell.
“For you to have a headache about this matter,” she went on, gleefully. “I don’t call it a small one, for it isn’t, but if you knew everything!”
“I know enough to make me feel like a cheat,” he blurted, wriggling about in the hammock. “I took you from a good home. I never wanted you to feel an anxiety, and now the first thing I’ve got to put you down to rigid economy. You see, father and I have to spend a certain amount on the business, or we’d be out of it in the war of competition, and we’ve both decided that expenses must be curtailed in our homes rather than in the iron works.”
“That shows you are good business men,” said Margaretta, promptly. “You are as good business men as husbands.”