"It's all so different when you're married, isn't it, Mother?" bubbled Sally. "Going into hotels and everything--you don't care who looks at you, you know you've a perfect right to go anywhere with your husband! Now, that look that Keith just gave me, as he went off with Richie--_blazing_! Well, it would just have amused me when we were engaged, but now I know that he's simply wretched with jealousy, and I'll have to pet him a little and quiet him down! He is a perfect child about money; he _will_ spend too much on everything, and if we go abroad I'll simply have to--" "Go abroad?" every one echoed. "Oh, I think we must, for Keith's music," Sally said gravely. "He can't settle down here, you know. He's got to live abroad, and he's got to have lessons--expensive lessons. Office work makes him too nervous, anyway." "Well, my dear, I hope you have money enough to carry out these pleasing plans," said Miss Toland dryly. "Well, we have my twenty-five a month," Sally said capably, "and Keith's father _ought_ to give him another twenty-five, because the expense of having Keith live at home will be gone, and"--Sally fixed a hopeful eye on her mother--"and I should think Dad would give me at least that, Mother," said she. "I must cost him much more than that!" "Oh, I--don't--know!" said Mrs. Toland guardedly, taken unawares, and slowly shaking her head. "Then I thought," pursued the practical Sally, "that if you would give me half the clothes of a regular trousseau, and if Dad would give us our travelling expenses to Berlin for a wedding present--why, there you are!" "But you two couldn't live on seventy-five dollars a month, Sally!" "Oh, Mother, Jeannette said you could get a lovely room for two--in a pension--for a dollar a day! And that leaves forty for lessons, two a week, and five dollars over!" "For laundry and carfare and doctor's bills," said Miss Toland unsympathetically. "Well!" Sally flared, resentful colour in her cheeks. "And Dad will never consent to anything so _outrageously_ unfair as living on thirty-five and spending forty for lessons!" said Barbara. Poor little Sally looked somewhat crushed. "For heaven's sake don't let Keith hear you say that, Babbie!" she said nervously. "It makes him frantic to suggest that you can get decent lessons in harmony for nothing! I don't know what you know about it, anyway. I'll fix it with Dad!" "If Dad allows Sally so much, he ought to do the same for the rest of us," Constance suggested. Julia, foreseeing a scene, slipped out of the room. In the hallway she encountered Doctor Studdiford, who was just downstairs after a late sleep. Jim had the satisfied air of a man who has had a long rest, a shave and a bath, and a satisfactory breakfast. "Family conference?" he said, nodding toward the sitting-room door. "Sally and Keith are here," Julia announced.