Living on a Little

eginning-Divi

s he was industriously engaged in buttering a muffin, paid scant attention to her for the moment. P

k suspended and are you considering how best to break

important expression as she

ing surprise. "You don't say so! Now who i

regarded him

Who could she possibly be engaged to but Fred Mas

h me with the news. So she's really and truly engaged. Well, I'm glad of it. Fred's a good fellow in spite of the fact

half good enough for her. But that i

nother muffin and

take her, father and mother will go abroad. Her idea

rest

r when I wrote you last I realized that you must know what was in the air. And I don't suppo

at," pleaded

ffered him a better salary than he has now, provided he will go to Sou

ut even so, with rents so high and food going up daily as the papers say it is, I am sure we shall find it not too easy to make both

me and live with you for a year and learn how to manage? That would be a cool propos

not to mention putting whole loaves of bread in the garbage pail daily. Now if that remorseless being has not yet arrived, won't you consider me in the light of an applicant for a place as general housework maid in her stead? I'll do anything and everything. I'll take the place of a butler, a cook, a house-maid, a waitress, anything you can mention except

save on wages you can turn in toward the dishes I break and the ingredients I waste in my apprentic

sy in his mind about me if I am with you while he is away.

tionate

Do

dreadful that he has to go away

er and looked eagerly at her h

her divert herself cooking up messes; if we can't eat them we can always invite company, who can't refuse. I'll send he

ning up to follow her departure, but on general principles the pantry shelves were scrubbed and some new saucepans purchased to replace the bur

scarcely worth living. But after she had unpacked and settled herself in her pretty room her spirits revived,

way the very next morning she p

n a really systematic fashion. You had to learn as you went along, I remember, and I dare say you made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of

uel, and Clothes, and so on. Mary, you have no idea what a practical mind he has! So you see we can take up these things and get some sort of view as to what it will cost u

e I wonder I have survived. I did make such blunders, and then I cried,-I cried bucketfuls of tears, and most of them at least could have been saved for other and important occasions if only I had been taught more practically. I do think it i

she brushed back her hair, "but perhaps we had better gi

to a couple brought up 'in marble halls, with servants and serfs to command,' five thousand a year might seem a pittance, while other

good manager; when you have arrived at that desirable point, the actual amount of your income does not matter so much as

t for the first six years of her married life she and her husband lived on a salary of six hundred dollars, 'and,' she said in the most complacent way, 'I could do it again, too, if I had to!' You see,

o another and our income has varied so much; then you know all one winter Dick was ill and we had nothing to live on but wha

r experience in a nutshell, or in an epigram, o

ad of riding, you still must eat, and you must have nourishing, appetizing food, or you will have doctor's bills which will terrify and impoverish you. Unless you can set a good table for a small sum of money, yo

ut down expenses when you have been extravagant or have to entertain, and how to lay in supplies when you have a surplus of money on hand; what to get in quantities and what to get in small amounts; what to do with the left-overs, and how to eke out one thing with another so as to have enough when you are short. It is as difficult to be

n as $1,800, though of course that is only a sort of average, because we are not positively certain ju

bout a dollar a day; you can feed a maid or a

," Dolly murmured, but she obe

place to live in, the city or the country, when you ha

orne co

here. We pay forty dollars a month for this small apartment, and we paid twenty-five for a whole house there; but to offset that, Dick's commutation ticket used up the difference.

ountry we had to hire our walks cleaned, and here we do not. There I simply had to have a maid, because I could not do all the work of a whole house, and here I can do without perfect

down nothing for fuel? That would be right in both city and country yo

nk that wil

ent down: Rent

d? I've always understood that was a life-work, and you might even go to

t us see. Suppose you decide to keep a servant, at least at first. For general housework in the city you will have to pay $5.00 a week, and you will be lucky i

ve not much money to spend cannot pay five dollars a week and still put out the washing. It's perfectly absurd to expe

sent to wash and iron, cook and clean, all for $4.00 a week; you really cannot do much better than that. Then you must teach her everything, of course, and d

an untrained maid, at all,

ime. Still, many a clever girl does do all her work and still manages to be always rested and fresh and prettily dressed; it's a mi

auty and a Madame Recamier of cleverness and a female chef and everythin

I have put on my lessons. But to go back to that perennially interesting question, Concerning Servants; put down $200 under Service. It really ought to be a little more than

body else. I think I'll do my own work and have a woman in to wash

e to pay $1.50 a day, besides car-fare an

to clean, say a day, or even half a d

urned rough-dry; that is a rather cheap way of doing, if you send a whole wash; then have a woman one day to iron and give you perhaps an hour or more of cleaning, too. There is an economical and a practical plan, to my thinking, but very likely you may not find it the best one for you to foll

em I suppose sho

upply your needs. Suppose this time you put down $150, just to have something to go by; it will be at least double that, possibly, after awhile. Now i

lence for a momen

ome

d $

and F

vic

the

-

l $1

om what I hope will be our income, $

ing we have not put down, and the name of them is Legion. Doctor's bills, dentist's bills, church, books, magazines, car-fares, entertaining, pocket money of every sort, gas bills,-unless you can get those out of your table all

ary, you f

savings bank; into that must-must, Dolly-go a small sum every single month. Nothing makes one feel so at peace with all the world as to know that there is a small but growing sum laid by for the rainy day which is absolutely sure to come just when you can least endure it. Think what it means to have something to fall back on in a great emergency!

, "and when Fred's salary is raised we will go on living at exactly the same

run gives greater satisfaction than candy or violets, though I don't dispute that they have their place, too. But cheer up! Housekeeping always get

o her other items and made her column under Income

ll, and I started off this morning so sure that I could do it offhand! I feel exactly as though I had a lesson to learn made up