"They are not horrid at all, but very good; we will begin to have them ourselves as soon as it gets warm enough. And besides cereals, I should see if I could not have some cheap hot breakfast dish to alternate with them; I suppose milk toast, or if you live where milk is plenty, cream toast, and codfish in lots of ways, especially in baked potatoes, or mixed with mashed potato in small dishes. Sometimes I should have codfish in fritters; brown puffy fritters, not flat greasy cakes. And I should have clams in that way, too, if they were cheap." "How about luncheons, now? Did you say you could or could not cut down on those?" "I think we cannot do much better than we have done, but I should keep trying all the time. I should have fried bread with jelly to eat on it, and baked beans, and farina cakes, and minced vegetables, hot or in salad. And in summer I should have creamed corn or peas on toast, and lots of salads of plain cooked vegetables. But be very careful not to try and cut down on your luncheons by doing without substantial dishes. No woman who does her own work can long keep up on bread and tea at noon without getting sallow and thin and anaemic; you simply must not try and economize on nourishing food, even though you cut down on everything expensive. Starvation is poor management." "Well, leaving meals for a moment, do you try and cut down on other things, such as coffee, for example? Do you have a poorer quality to save money?" "Never. I must have good coffee at any rate. But I will tell you what I do right along. I go to a very good grocery, one of the largest and most expensive sort, and there I ask for a good kind of coffee which is not as expensive as their highest grades. You will be astonished to find that all such places make a specialty of coffee which actually costs less than you can buy it for at your regular grocery, and it is infinitely better, too. One famous place keeps coffee for thirty-five and forty cents a pound and even more, and at the same time recommends what they call their 'best' coffee, at nineteen cents! It seems absurd, but that is a fact. I always use it, and it is the best I can buy. Never use cheap coffee, Dolly; it is horrid, just as bad butter is, or bad tea, or bad eggs. Go without, or have them good." "Mary, did you ever think what you would do if you had to live on just a few cents a day? I have often wondered whether I could manage or not. Suppose for a time you had practically nothing at all, how would you manage then?"