Milly swore by F. W. Woolworth as by a savior. Nathan gave her fifty dollars to temporarily furnish her pantry, more money than she had ever held in her hands at one time in all her past life. Twenty-five dollars she “slipped” to her mother to get all her younger brothers and sisters some shoes. With the other half she “descended” on the five-and-ten. She bought all her dishes and pantry ware from the five-and-ten. She bought ribbons, pictures and three cardboard wastebaskets. She bought flour sifters that wouldn’t sift and tack pullers that wouldn’t pull. She procured a huge cambric bag and came home each night, straining beneath it or with a young brother pulling it on his sled. Saturday afternoon she had twenty-five cents remaining. She hunted the five-and-ten anxiously for five articles of a nickel apiece which “might come in handy around the house.” Her last purchase was a half-dozen lead pencils. They slipped from her moth-eaten muff before she reached her gate however. The Forge home became a jumble of nothing in particular but in character somewhat weird. A mahogany rocker, a mission center table, a golden-oak what-not (secondhand) and a gilt corner chair were exhibits A, B, C and D in the front room. The walls of the house not hung with small ten-cent pictures were spattered with colored postcards on big pins,—from Savin Rock or Nantasket Beach. The chaotic total of all this shabby gentility shocked Nathan when he beheld it. He decided it was a lack of money. He didn’t possess enough to furnish a home like the Seavers of previous mention. But he did make a start the first Christmas by surprising Milly with a quartered-oak Victrola to harmonize with the mission center table, the idea being to unify eventually the scheme of the room as more bizarre effects could be culled out. But three things happened to the Victrola with lamentable swiftness. First, Milly decided it wasn’t the center table she wanted the Victrola to match; it was the installment piano. So without consulting Nathan she went as usual to the “five-and-ten” and bought a half-dozen cans of “paint” whose outer labels bore some resemblance to the color of the piano. The effect on the beautiful, dull, mission finish was not at all what Milly had anticipated; in fact, the Victrola looked as though it had weathered a bad attack of cherry measles. The painting was still a _casus belli_ in the Forge “parlor” when Jake Richards’ youngest child pulled out most of the records one Sunday afternoon and broke them; they “cracked with such a nice noise!” Lastly, young Tommy Richards decided during an after-school visit to his sister that something ailed the “works” of the Victrola and they emphatically needed fixing. So he dug out an alarming array of “five-and-ten” tools, everything in fact but an ax, and proceeded to “fix” them. The novelty of it palled on him after he had pinched a finger, and he deserted the science of melodious mechanics