All good housekeepers know that those who buy in the ready-money market fare best; and besides, the paying out of ready-money is undoubtedly a check on expenditure, and is to be specially recommended to people of small means. It is easy and tempting to give an order, and though it can no doubt be paid for sooner or later, somehow the sum always seems to assume larger proportions as time goes on. We very seldom get in a bill for a less amount than we expect. My own view of the case is, that I grudge to pay for food after it is eaten, or clothes after they are worn; and in my own housekeeping I have found ready-money, or, at the outside, weekly accounts, the best arrangement, to which I adhere without any exceptions. Short accounts, also, give one another advantage, the choice of all markets. Thus the money is laid out to the best possible advantage, and the highest value obtained. All thrifty and far-seeing housekeepers know that it is cheaper to buy certain household stores, as sugar, butter, flour, soap, etc., in quantities, provided there is a suitable storeroom where the things will be kept in good condition. There are indeed innumerable methods whereby the good housewife can save her coppers and her shillings, and a wise woman is she who takes advantage of them to the utmost. This art of housekeeping is not learned in a day; those of us who have been engaged in it for years are constantly finding out how little we know, and how far we are, after all, from perfection. It requires a clever woman to keep house; and as I said before there is ample scope, even within the four walls of a house (a sphere which some affect to despise), for the exercise of originality, organising power, administrative ability. And to the majority of women I would fain believe it is the most interesting and satisfactory of all feminine occupations. [Illustration] VIII. _ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES._ In these very words lurks a danger likely to beset our young couple, on the very threshold of their career. All eyes are upon them, of course; their house and all it contains, their way of life, the position they take up and maintain, are, for the time being, topics of intense concern to all who know them, and to many who do not. There is no doubt that we need to go back in some degree to the simpler way of life in vogue in the days of our grandmothers; that pretentiousness and extravagance have reached a point which is almost unendurable. We are constantly being informed by statistics which cannot be questioned that the marriage rate is decreasing; and we know that in our own circles the number of marriageable girls and marriageable youths who for some inexplicable reason _don't_ marry is very great.