Charlotte was always busy. The cottage and all in it had come to her from her father's aunt. She had been accustomed to seeing the windows, the furniture, the mirrors, the silver door knobs shining; therefore, she knew such things ought to shine, and since there was no one in these days but herself to do it, she cleaned, polished, rubbed, and went to bed limp. One afternoon in the late fall, when the children sought her, she was pasting papers over glasses of jelly. "We went over the river to see the boat yesterday," King William was saying to Alexina as they came in. "Tell her about it, mother; about the gold star at the bow." The papers did not want to stick. "He's a bad boy, little Mab," Charlotte informed her. "He made me take him over before he'd promise to go to the party he's asked to. He wants to be a little boor who won't know how to act when he grows up." "I'm never goin' to parties when I'm grown up, so what's the use learning how to act at 'em now?" argued her son. Charlotte dropped a mucilaged paper. "But you promised," she reminded him anxiously; "you promised--" "Oh, well--" admitted her son. Charlotte kept a fire in her parlour. Coal was at a fabulous price in the South that winter, but she had never known a parlour without a fire, and here she and the children sat in the afternoons, the Captain often returning early and joining them. "Georges," said Charlotte upon one of these occasions, "we are poor." The Captain smoked in silence. Perhaps he had realized it before. His keen eyes, however, were regarding her. "But," said Charlotte, "we go on acting as though we were rich." "Just so," said the Captain. "When your trousers get shabby, you order more like them. Did you ever ask your tailor if he has anything cheaper?" Now, trousers of that pearl tint peculiar to the finest fabrics were as characteristic a part of the Captain's garb as were the black coat, the low-cut vest, the linen cambric handkerchiefs like small tablecloths for size, the tall silk hat, and the Henry Clay collar above the black silk stock. "Did you ever ask him if he had anything cheaper, Georges?" "I can't say," admitted Georges, "that I ever did." For the Captain had never asked his tailor a price in his life. When the bill came he paid it. But it takes income to meet eccentricities of this sort, while now-- Did the Captain, glancing from his wife to the boy on the floor, seem to age, to shrink in his chair? For Charlotte was thirty-two and the boy was ten and the Captain was nearing sixty. "And when your shirts and Willy's things and mine give out, I've been going right on to the sisters ordering more. Convent prices are high, Georges." The Captain had nothing to say. "Adele has been telling me that she cuts down her eldest boy's things for the little one." Adele was the widow of a Confederate general. "So I borrowed her patterns. Listening to Adele talk, I realized, Georges, that you and Willy and I have to learn how to be poor."