"Oh, we have not had those things right along! We had chicken last week, once, and the week before we had a pot-roast which I recall with pleasure this minute. But I admit the accusation in part, for you know we have had the dinner-parties to make up for. Ordinarily, I do not manage quite so closely. But if for a week or two you have calf's head once, and a dinner or two of beef shin and such things, you will cut down wonderfully on your meat bill. You can have also a dinner of one Frenched tenderloin, and another of scrag of mutton with barley, and a third of half a pound of chopped beef made up into meat cakes with a brown gravy. If you eke out with odds and ends of things in croquettes, with heavy soup before it, I should think you could save nearly two dollars in the one item of meat, and no one the wiser. Then once have a main course of salt codfish, freshened and creamed and baked with crumbs, in place of meat, and another time have baked beans, just for a change. If it is summer-time you can have a very good dinner dish of an eggplant. Cut it in two sidewise, take out the centre and salt it, and put it under a weight to extract the juice. After an hour or so take it up and chop it and mix it with an equal quantity of seasoned bread crumbs and a small cup of chopped nuts. Heap this in the shell and bake it with a covering of crumbs and butter. It is just as nourishing as meat and not so heavy, though it is a distinctly substantial dish. Of course you must be careful to get a very cheap eggplant, or you save nothing, but I am supposing now you live where gardens are plenty; perhaps you can walk out and pick one in your own. "To go with the meats, possibly we can find some spring vegetables that cost no more than winter ones would. Naturally we cannot buy asparagus, nor yet new peas, but I fancy we may pick up some cheap new beets or carrots. If not, we will just go on having winter ones, but we will try and serve them in vegetable croquettes, or cream them and bake them with crumbs for a change. And then we can certainly have greens of ever so many kinds, and nothing is more wholesome in the spring than greens." "I simply despise them," said Dolly with a sniff of disdain.