When Sally Lester gave her hand in marriage to Ralph Lyon, she was a delicate, timid girl of eighteen, who had passed the spring-time of life happily beneath her father’s roof. To her, care, anxiety, and trouble were yet strangers. The first few years of her married life passed happily—for Ralph was one of the kindest of husbands, and suffered his wife to lean upon him so steadily, that the native strength of her own character remained undeveloped. Ralph Lyon was an industrious mechanic, who always had steady work and good wages. Still, he did not seem to get ahead as some others did, notwithstanding Sally was a frugal wife, and did all her own work, instead of putting him to the expense of help in the family. Of course, this being the case, it was evident that there was a leak somewhere, but where it was neither Ralph nor his wife could tell. “Thomas Jones has bought the piece of ground next to his cottage,” said Ralph one day to Sally, “and says that next year he hopes to be able to put up a small frame-house, big enough for them to live in. He paid sixty dollars for the lot, and it is at least a quarter of an acre. He is going to put it all in garden this spring, and says he will raise enough to give him potatoes, and other vegetables for a year to come. It puzzles me to know how he saves money. He doesn’t get any better wages than I do, and his family is quite as large.” “I am sure,” returned Sally, who felt that there was something like a reflection upon her in what her husband said, “that Nancy Jones doesn’t spend her husband’s earnings more frugally than I do mine. Every week she has a woman to help her wash, and I do it all myself.” “I am sure it isn’t your fault—at least I don’t think it is,” replied Ralph; “but something is wrong somewhere. I don’t spend any thing at all, except for a glass or two every day, and a little tobacco; and this, of course, couldn’t make the difference.” Sally said nothing. A few glasses a-day and tobacco, she knew, must cost something, though, like her husband, she did not believe it would make the difference of buying a quarter of an acre of ground, and building a snug cottage in the course of a few years.