The little friendly chat gave Lydia courage for her plan of asking her husband's advice about her perplexity, but, mindful of traditional wisdom, she decided, as she thriftily changed her silk "party dress" for a house-gown of soft wool, that she would wait until the mollifying influence of dinner had time to assert itself. She wondered fearfully, with a quick throb of her heart, how he would receive her confidence. When she called him to the table she looked searchingly into his strong, resolute, good-natured face, and then, dropping her eyes, with an indrawn breath, began her usual fruitless endeavors to learn from him a little of what had occupied his day--his long, mysterious day, spent in a world of which he brought back but the scantiest tidings to her. As usual, to-night he shook his shoulders impatiently at her questioning. "Oh, Lydia darling, don't talk shop! I'm sick and tired of it after three days of nothing else. I want to leave all that behind me when I come home. That's what a home is for!" Lydia did not openly dissent from this axiom, though she murmured helplessly: "I feel so awfully shut out. It is what you think about most of the time, and I do not know enough about it even to imagine--" Paul leaned across the table to lay an affectionate hand on his wife's slim fingers. "Count your mercies, my dear. It's all grab, and snap, and cutting somebody's throat before he has a chance to cut yours. It wouldn't please you if you did know anything about it--the business world." He drew a long breath, and went on appreciatively with his cutlet--Lydia had learned something about meats since the year before--"You are a very good provider, little girl; do you know it?" "Oh, I love to," said Lydia. She added reflectively: "Wouldn't it be nice if things were so I could do the cooking myself and not have to bother with these horrible creatures that are all you can get usually?" Paul laughed at the fancy. "That's a high ambition for my wife, I must say!" "We'd have better things to eat even than Ellen gives us," said Lydia pensively. "If I had a little more time to put on it, I could do wonders, I'm sure of it." "I don't doubt that," said her husband gallantly; "but did you ever know anybody who _was_ her own cook?" "Well, not except in between times, when they couldn't get anybody else," confessed Lydia. "But lots of people I know who do go through the motions of keeping one would be better off without one. They can't afford it, and--Oh, I wish we were poorer!" Paul was highly amused by this flight of fancy. "But we're as poor as poverty already," he reminded her. "We're poor for buying hundred-dollar broadcloth tailor-made suits for me, and cut glass for the table, but we'd have plenty if I could wear ready-made serge at--"