Claire was blushing furiously. Of course, everybody would guess that she was unmarried and inexperienced. In reality, her question was already forgotten. The audience was absorbed in watching the butcher carving the hind quarter of the beef. “You ladies scorn the flank,” he explained, as he held up a long thin cut of beef, “but the inside cut, with a pocket to be filled with poultry dressing, makes a fine pot roast. And now for the steaks,--” Delmonico, porterhouse, sirloin and round--he explained their points clearly, and then a young bride brought up the question: “What is minute steak?” “You’ll have to ask the chef,” replied the butcher, nodding to a stout mustached man on the edge of the crowd. “We thought you might ask questions like this, so we brought him along.” “Minute steak,” explained the chef, “is any good cut, without bone, sliced very thin. It gets its name from the short time required to cook it.” Zip, the saw, knives and hatchet gleamed in and out of the red flesh, and the pages of Mrs. Larry’s note-book bristled with facts and figures. When the demonstration was over, she snapped a rubber band around the little book, thrust it into her bag and walked thoughtfully to the elevator. “Did you enjoy it, honey?” Teresa Moore linked arms with Mrs. Larry and rang for the elevator. “Well, if there’s any enjoyment in learning how little you know, I must have had a perfectly splendid time!” replied Mrs. Larry, not without slight sarcasm. “Fine! I felt the same way--once. Now go a-marketing while it is all fresh in your mind. Put the fear of God in the heart of your butcher. You won’t have to do it but once, I venture to assure you.” “I will,” said Mrs. Larry firmly, as they parted at the corner. Then suddenly she stopped and stared in dismay at an unoffending, overtrimmed pincushion in a shop window. Memory turned a blur of red beef, white bone and creamy yellow fat. “I don’t believe I’ll ever recognize those different cuts when I see them.” “I will,” said Claire Pierce firmly. “I mean to have a talk with our butcher, too. No doubt father has paid him thousands of dollars, and now he can pay back some of the overcharge by teaching me how to buy meat properly. Let’s go into that shop; I want to buy a note-book like yours.” “Well,” said Mrs. Larry thoughtfully, as they waited for Claire’s parcel and change, “they do say that meat is cheaper in Kansas City than in New York.” CHAPTER III “_There’s always a reason for high prices, and it’s well worth finding out._”--H. C. OF L. PROVERB NO. 3. Mr. Larry, settling his stalwart shoulders into his overcoat, stopped and looked down with a smile at the pink-tipped finger peeping through the buttonhole in his left-hand lapel. He had come to recognize certain wifely signs. Mrs. Larry’s finger attached to this particular buttonhole indicated that Mrs. Larry’s gray matter was twisting itself into an interrogation point. “Well?” he prompted.