“Then the retrenching is to be the elimination of the fifteen-dollar-a-week professional reader, who needs the work and earns the money, and two courses from our already aldermanic meals? What else?”
“I shall send the silver to the bank and use plate. The smartest people do that. I shall make aunty embroider my monograms; she can as well as not––the last were frightfully expensive. I’m going to bargain sales after this, and take cook and drive out to the Polish market. Why, things are two and three cents a pound cheaper–––”
Steve rose abruptly, tipping over the dainty chair as he did so. He tried to straighten out the pinky rug and set the chair properly upon it. Then he squared off his shoulders and dutifully stooped to kiss his economical little helpmate.
“All right, darling,” he said, glibly, feeling that Gorgeous Girls were get-rich-quick men’s albatrosses, “that will be very amusing for you. It will tide you over until the horse-show season. Now if you don’t mind I’m going below to ask what the chances are for some roast beef!”
Toward Christmas, when Beatrice had gone to New York with friends and Mark Constantine discovered that dying is ever so much harder than death, Mary told Steve that she was considering a new position, with a firm dealing in fabrics, a firm of old and honourable reputation.
She laid the letter from her prospective employers on his desk, in almost naïve fashion. It was as if she wanted to show this was no woman’s threat but a bona-fide and businesslike proposition. And if she blushed from sheer foolish joy at the disappointed and protesting expression that came into his face it 264 was small solace after the struggle she had undergone before she made herself take this step.
“You are not going,” he began, angrily. “I’m damned if you do!”
“Oh, my dear, my own dear,” she murmured within. Outwardly she shook her head briskly and added, “Yes, I am. The hours––the salary–––”
“The deuce take that stuff! How much more money do you want me to pay you? How few hours a day will you consent to work? You know so well it has been you who have done your own slave driving. Besides, I can’t get on without you.”