and fifty dollars out of it at one time and put it in the bank for Bobberts, could we? We never have two hundred and fifty dollars at one time. And yet two hundred and fifty dollars is only ten per cent. of my yearly salary. But if I buy a cigar for ten cents it would be no hardship for me to put a cent in the bank for Bobberts, [Pg 10]would it? Not a bit! And if you buy an ice cream soda; it would not cramp our finances to put a cent in the bank for each soda, would it? And yet a cent is ten per cent. of a dime.”

[Pg 9]

[Pg 10]

“That is very simple and very easy,” said Mrs. Fenelby, “and I think it would be a very good plan. I think we ought to begin at once.”

“So do I,” said Mr. Fenelby. “But we don’t want to begin a thing like this and then let it slip from our minds after a day or two. If the government did that the nation’s revenue would all fade away. We ought to go at it in a business-like way, just as [Pg 11]the United States would do it. We ought to write it down, and then live up to it. Now, I’ll write it down.”

[Pg 11]

Mr. Fenelby went to his desk and took a seat before it. He opened the desk and pulled from beneath the pile of loose papers and tissue patterns with which it was littered the large blankbook in which Mrs. Fenelby, in one of her spurts of economical system, had once begun a record of household expenditures—a bothersome business that lasted until she had to foot up the first week’s figures, and then stopped. There were plenty of blank leaves in the book. Mr. Fenelby dipped his pen in the ink. Mrs. [Pg 12]Fenelby took up her sewing, and began to stitch a seam. Bobberts lay asleep on the lounge at the other side of the room.

[Pg 12]

Mr. Fenelby was not over thirty. His chubby, smiling face radiated enthusiasm, and if he was not very tall he had a noble forehead that rounded up to meet the baldness that began so far back that his hat showed a little half-moon of baldness at the back. He looked cheerfully at the world through rather strong spectacles, and everyone said how much he looked like Bobberts. Mrs. Fenelby was younger, but she took a much more matter-of-fact view of life and things, [Pg 13]and Mr. Fenelby never ceased congratulating himself on having married her. “My wife Laura,” he would say to his friends, “has great executive ability. She is a wonder. I let her attend to the little details.” The truth was that she managed him, and managed the 

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