Evelyn's table blossomed out into all manner of pretty devices, each studied from a newly purchased cook-book. The butter reposed in beautifully shaped rolls on a feathery bed of parsley; even homely roasted potatoes looked inviting as they lay in a nest made of the snowy folds of a fringed napkin. Mr. Ferris declared he was twice fed by Evelyn's banquets. So it was all very fine until the bills came in at the end of the month; not that daintiness in serving cost anything, but she had erred in other directions. Evelyn was in consternation, for she had confidently supposed she could save a snug little bit from the sum allotted for housekeeping expenses, and this amount she was at liberty to spend as she chose, and she had already chosen to get a dozen tinted finger-glasses, a Japanese bowl for broken ice, another for salad, and so on, until, to her mind's eye, her table was a dream of color and form; but when that eye opened on the grocery bill, and the butcher's bill, and the milk bill, and then on minus six dollars and eighty-five cents, it nearly dropped a tear of shame and disappointment. "No," she thought, after suppressing her first impulse to ask her mother what to do, "no! If I have been extravagant, I must find out where, and pay for it; and this deficit shall come out of my own allowance. Next month I will do better." And she did. Nan wrote from New York, about the middle of November: "Thanksgiving is coming, but I'm not. As my highest earthly desire is to earn twenty-five dollars, I'm not going to spend that much, especially as I haven't got it, for just two days' pleasure. I may mention, by way of a mere casual remark, that at present there isn't the dimmest possibility of my earning a punched coin this year, unless I happen to take a prize next spring. In my own humble imagination I have already done this and have, of course, chosen the things I shall buy with the money! But I do wish there were no rudiments to learn. They keep one back so! All this week I've devoted the forces of my nature to drawing straight lines and angles, However, I have long suspected that one of my faults was dislike of real hard work, so I am going to 'peg right along,' and lay foundations.