"Does she have an account book?" said Osborn more lightly. "How knowing!"
Marie brought a book, and opened it upon her knee, and sat, pencil poised. She was very earnest. "How much ought we to spend?"
"You know what my screw is," said Osborn, as if unwilling to particularise.
Marie wrote at the top of her page, "Two hundred pounds."
"Forty pounds rent," she wrote next.
"And my odd expenses, lunch and clothes, and so on," said Osborn, "have never been less than sixty or seventy pounds, you know."
She wrote slowly. "Sixty to seventy pounds, expenses," when he stopped her.
"I'll have to curtail that!" he exclaimed.
In the ensuing silence both man and wife thought along the same track. It suddenly gave him a nasty jar, to hit up against the necessity of stopping those pleasant little spendings, those odd drinks, those superior smokes, the last word in colourings for shirts and ties. Of course, such stoppage was well worth while. Oh, immensely so!
And she had a lump in her throat. She thought: "He'll find all this a burden. He's had all he wants; and so've I. I wish we were rich."