“But to pay fifty dollars,” pursued Lucy, in a dissatisfied tone, for she was thinking of fifty things on which she would prefer laying out fifty dollars.
“I must do the best I can, Lucy,” replied her husband. “And now, I am sorry to say it, Lucy, but we must retrench in something—we don’t make the two ends meet this year.”
“Don’t we?” said Lucy sadly, “that’s very bad.”
“Yes, so it is. But don’t look so doleful about it, Lucy, for Heaven’s sake,” said her husband; “it is not so bad after all—for though we are behind hand, it is not a great deal. We have only to cut off something else next year, and then all will come right again.”
“Well,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, “where shall we begin. We can’t do very well with a servant less. The cook, of course, we must have. The chambermaid does the washing. The man—we can get a waiter-girl instead of a man, if you are willing.”
Coolidge hesitated, and said,
“That is only exchanging one servant for another; and I hate girl waiters. I never can order a woman; and then I must hire some one to clean my boots—and there’s the putting in coal. The difference of wages soon makes itself up, you see, in these trifles that you want all the time. These sort of economies only make one uncomfortable, and save in the end little or nothing.”
“That’s true,” she replied mournfully.
“We can give up the curtains for the back parlour,” rejoined he.
“But they are ordered,” replied Lucy.