"Something must be wrong, mother. Let us do what we should have done at first, make a careful estimate of our expenses." "Well." "It costs us just ten dollars each week for marketing--and I know that our groceries are at least that, including flour; that you see makes twenty dollars, and we only get twenty-eight dollars for our eight boarders. Our rent will bring our expenses up to that. And then there are servants' wages, fuel, our own clothes, and the boys' schooling, besides what we lose every year, and the hundred little expenses which cannot be enumerated." "Bless me, Mary! No wonder we have gone behindhand." "Indeed, mother, it is not." "We have acted very blindly, Mary." "Yes, we have; but we must do so no longer. Let us give up our boarders, and move into a smaller house." "But what shall we do Mary? Our money will soon dwindle away." "We must do something for a living, mother, that is true. But if we cannot now see what we shall do, that is no reason why we should go on as we are. Our rent, you know, takes away from us eight dollars a week. We can get a house large enough for our own purposes at three dollars a week, or one hundred and fifty dollars a year, I am sure, thus saving five dollars a week there, and that money would buy all the plain food our whole family would eat." "But it will never do, Mary, for us to go to moving into a little bit of a pigeon-box of a house." "Mother, if we don't get into a cheaper house and husband our resources, we shall soon have no house to live in!" said Mary, with unwonted energy. "Well, child, perhaps you are right; but I can't bear the thought of it," Mrs. Turner replied. "And any how, I can't see what we are going to do then." "We ought to do what we see to be right, mother, had we not?" Mary asked, looking affectionately into her mother's face. "I suppose so, Mary." "Won't it be right for us to reduce our expenses, and make the most of what we have left?" "It certainly will, Mary." "Then let us do what seems to be right, and we shall see further, I am sure, as soon as we have acted." Thus urged, Mrs. Turner consented to relinquish her boarders, and to move into a small house, at a rent very considerably reduced. Many articles of furniture they were obliged to dispose of, and this added to their little fund some five hundred dollars. About two months after they were fairly settled, Mary said to her mother-- "I've been thinking a good deal lately, mother, about getting into something that would bring us in a living." "Well, child, what conclusion have you come to?" "You don't like the idea of setting up a little store?" "No, Mary, it is too exposing." "Nor of keeping a school?" "No." "Well, what do you think of my learning the dress-making business?" "Nonsense, Mary!" "But, mother, I could learn in six months, and then we could set up the business, and I am sure we could do well. Almost every one who sets up dress-making, gets along."