A like principle may be followed on other occasions. If company must be entertained, if a family feast must be observed, prudent marketing and skilful cookery may delude the household into an ignorance of the fact that money is being saved to carry the housekeeper over the time of increased bills. Constant thought and consideration are required for this, but to the lover of housekeeping the occupation after a while becomes almost like a game in which she pits her wits against the cost of living and glories when she comes out ahead. Here is an enterprise in which the habit of going to market for oneself and the custom of keeping strict account of disbursements both help the worker. She can pick up at a bargain a cut of meat, a selection of fish, a choice of vegetables or of fruit, or an occasion in canned goods which will at once bring down her average and permit her to lay aside a little toward the next heavy pull upon her purse. This is especially likely to be the case in the period of preserving, pickling, and similar pursuits, when often a happy “find” in fruit will help to lighten the unavoidable weight of conserving of any sort. The wise student of housekeeping need not let her family recognize the alternation of a feast and a fast at the table. When they eat a larded lamb’s liver, they will not suspect an economy; when they rejoice in filleted sole they will have no idea that the cheapness of flounders is responsible for their treat, any more than they guess that a delectable trifle which redeems a rather simple dinner is made from the remains of stale cake, the left-overs of a couple of jars of jam, and a simple custard. Some of the so-called economies do not economize. A bread-pudding which requires eggs, milk, sugar, butter, and raisins to the value of fifteen or twenty cents to use up three cents’ worth of stale bread can by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as a saving. Better make toast of the bread, save it for stuffing, or dry it and keep it for crumbs to serve in frying. But there are genuine economies galore, and the woman who makes a science of them will lay up for herself a series of agreeable sensations when she balances her housekeeping accounts at the end of the month. V THE HOUSE IN ORDER Putting the house in order is one thing. Keeping it in order is quite another. Once upon a time there was a theory that every house, no matter how well kept, how frequently swept and scrubbed, must be torn up by the roots twice a year, for the spring and fall cleaning. At those dreadful periods mere men fled from before the devastating broom and scrubbing-brush wielded by the woman of the family. Even when they stole home in the evening to the slim meal which was all the worn-out housekeeper could provide, the halls and stairs were likely to be blocked by pails of suds, by furniture or rolls of carpet _en route_.