The young couple who marry and live contentedly on 20s. a week are usually members of families of at least four or five persons, and have struggled through their childhood on their share of an income which may have been anything from 20s. to 25s. or 26s. a week. Their standard of comfort is disastrously low, and they do not for the first year or two realise that even two or three children will develop into a burden which is too great for their strength. It is not the greater number of children alone: it is the greater cost of accommodating, feeding, and clothing boys and girls as they get older which increases the strain. Moreover, the separation of interests soon begins to show itself. The husband goes to the same work—hard, long, and monotonous—but at least a change from the growing discomfort of the home. He gets accustomed to seeing his wife slave, and she gets accustomed to seeing him appear and disappear on his daily round of work, which gradually appeals less and less to her imagination, till, at thirty, she hardly knows what his duties are—so overwhelmed is she in the flood of her own most absorbing duties and economies. Her economies interfere with his comfort, and are irksome to him; so he gets out of touch with her point of view. He cannot see why the cooking should be less satisfactory than it used to be, and says so. She knows she needs a new saucepan, but cannot possibly afford to buy one, and says so. He makes his wife the same allowance, and expects the same amount of food. She has more mouths to fill, and grows impatient because he does not understand that, though their first baby did not seem to make much difference, a boy of three, plus a baby, makes the old problem into quite a new one. One of her questions is the balance between rent and food, which is of enormous importance. Yet she never can feel certain that she has found the right solution. Shall they all live in one room? Or shall they take two basement rooms at an equally low rent, but spend more on gas and coal, and suffer more from damp and cold? Or shall they take two rooms above stairs and take the extra rent out of the food? Her own appetite may not be very large, so she decides perhaps on the two better rooms upstairs. She may decide wisely, as we think, but the sacrifice in food is not to be ignored in its results on the health of the children.