Corydon declared herself willing to do her share in the matter of saving money; but it seemed to him that whenever he suggested a concrete idea, there would be objections. “We can get up at dawn,” he would say, “and save the cost of oil.” “Yes,” she would answer. “And we can do our own laundry,” he would continue. But immediately another argument would begin; it was impossible to persuade Corydon that diapers could be washed in cold water, even when one had the whole of the Great Lakes for a washtub. They would go on to contemplate the glorious time when they would have money enough to build a home of their own, that could be inhabited in winter as well as in summer; Corydon always referred to it with the line from “Caradrion”--“the little cot, fringed round with tender green.” It would be fine for the baby, they agreed--he should never have to go back to the city again. Thyrsis had a vision of him as he would be in that home: a brown and freckled country boy, with what were known, in the dialect of “dam-fool talk”, as “yagged panties and bare feets”. But Corydon would protest at that picture. “It’s all right,” she said, “to put up with ugliness if you have to. But what’s the use of making a fetish of it?” “It wouldn’t be ugliness,” replied he. “It would be Nature! ‘Blessings on thee, little man!’” “That’s all very well. But I want Cedric to have curls--” “Curls!” he cried. “And then a Fauntleroy suit, I suppose!” “No--at least not while we’re poor. But I want him to look decent----” “If you have curls, then you’ll want a nurse-maid to brush them!” “Nonsense, Thyrsis! Can’t a mother take care of her child’s own hair?” “_Some_ mothers can--they have nothing better to do. But if you were going in for the hair-dresser’s art, why did you cut off your own?” And so would come yet new discussions. “You’ll be wanting me to maintain an establishment!” Thyrsis would cry, whenever these aesthetic impulses manifested themselves. He seemed to be haunted by that image of an establishment. All married men came to it in the end--there seemed to be something in matrimony that predisposed to it; and far better adopt at once the ideals and habits of the gypsies, than to settle into respectability with a nurse-maid and a cook! Thyrsis was under the necessity of sweeping clean his soul, because of all the luxury and wantonness he saw in this metropolis, and the madness to which it goaded his soul. Some day fame would come to him, he knew--wealth also, perhaps; and oh, there must be one man in all the city who was not corrupted, who did not learn extravagance and self-indulgence, who practiced as well as preached the life of faith! And so, again and again, he and Corydon would renew the pledges of their courtship-days--pledges to a discipline of Spartan sternness.