"Oh, dear," said Francesca, "everything keeps going up." She was engaged upon the weekly books and spoke in a tone of heartfelt despair. "Well," I said, "you've known all along how it would be. Everybody's told you so." "Everybody? Who's everybody in this case?" "I told you so for one, and Mr. Asquith mentioned it several times, and so did Mr. McKenna." "I have never," she said proudly, "discussed my weekly books with Messrs. Asquith and McKenna. I should scorn the action." "That's all very well," I said. "Keep them away as far as you can, but they'll still get hold of you. The Chancellor of the Exchequer knows your weekly books by heart." "I wish," she said, "he'd add them up for me. He's a good adder-up, I suppose, or he wouldn't be what he is." "He's fair to middling, I fancy--something like me." "_You!_" she said, in a tone of ineffable contempt. "You're no good at addition." "Francesca," I said, "you wrong me. I'm a great deal of good. Of course I don't pretend to be able to run three fingers up three columns of figures a yard long and to write down the result as L7,956 17_s._ 8_d_., or whatever it may be, without a moment's pause. I can't do that, but for the ordinary rough-and-tumble work of domestic addition I'm hard to beat. Only if I'm to do these books of yours there must be perfect silence in the room. I mustn't be talked to while I'm wrestling with the nineteens and the seventeens in the shilling column." "In fact," said Francesca, "you ought to be a deaf adder." "Francesca," I said, "how could you? Give me the butcher's book and let there be no more _jeux de mots_ between us." I took the book, which was a masterpiece of illegibility, and added it up with my usual grace and felicity. "Francesca," I said as I finished my task, "my total differs from the butcher's, but the difference is in his favour, not in mine. He seems to have imparted variety to his calculations by considering that it took twenty pence to make a shilling, which is a generous error. Now let me deal with the baker while you tackle the grocer, and then we'll wind up by doing the washing-book together." The washing-book was a teaser, the items being apparently entered in Chaldee, but we stumbled through it at last. "And now," I said, "we can take up the subject of thrift." "I don't want to talk about it," she said, "I'm thoroughly tired of it. We've talked too much about it already." "You're wrong there; we haven't talked half enough. If we had, the books wouldn't have gone up." "They haven't gone up," she said. "They're about the same, but we've been having less." "Noble creature," I said, "do you mean to say that you've docked me of one of my Sunday sausages and the whole of my Thursday roly-poly pudding and never said a word about it?" "Well, you didn't seem to notice it, so I left it alone." "Ah, but I did notice it," I said, "but I determined to suffer in silence in order to set an example to the children."