Letitia looked radiant. I felt I had made a hit. "You are really a sensible man, after all, Archie," she declared (I could have dispensed with the "after all"). "If you don't mind paying the same wages to cook that she would get with Fifth Avenue millionaires, naturally we can not fail. Moreover, she will have an easier time with us than with them, as we don't give dinner parties or sit down thirty or forty to a meal. It's really a lovely idea. And--and--don't you think, dear, that saving is awfully provincial and petty, and--and--Brooklyn?" I hadn't looked upon it in that light. Tamworth had advised me to put something aside, as he said that married men were bound to provide for emergencies. I had done this systematically. In the meantime, we were literally "pigging" it. Surely this was the rainy day. "Why should a young, brainy man like you," continued Letitia, beaming fondly upon me, "worry himself about what _might_ happen in the distant future? It seems so--so--little, doesn't it, dear? It is so like the little Brooklyn clerks whom you see trundling baby-carriages and rushing away to savings banks with a five-dollar bill. It is really unworthy of the author of _Lives of Great Men_. The thrifty always seem to me so namby-pamby." "You are overthrowing the doctrines of domestic economy, Letitia," I said with a smile. "Well, let's do it, Archie. If we can be comfortable, we might as well overthrow things. Oh, I suppose thrift is all right. 'A penny saved'--and all that sort of thing! Let's have a culinary student in the kitchen, and pay her a handsome salary. We shall be happy, and when we are happy, we prosper. That is surely so. We send forth radiant thoughts, and they all work for us. I believe in that. Oh, won't it be fun, Archie?" There seemed to be logic in this idea. What's the use of saving and being uncomfortable to-day, when we may die to-morrow? We might better invest our money in the certainty of a blissful present, than hoard it in the uncertainty of the future. So we carefully knocked down the elaborate maxims of the "institutions for savings," and felt relieved. "It is absurd," said Letitia, as she dipped the tips of her fingers into a rosy finger-bowl, "all this business of economy. Suppose you _were_ incapacitated, Archie, do you imagine that I am quite helpless? I could teach Latin, and there must be hundreds of girls just crazy to read Ovid in the original. Or, I could learn typewriting, or bookkeeping, or other ugly but profitable accomplishments. We should never starve. I could even go on the stage, if _everything_ else failed." "Only if everything else failed, my dear," I suggested. "Oh, of course; as the very last thing. So many girls do it. If they are too silly to teach, or too unsympathetic to get married, or too lazy to learn anything, they go on the stage, and get lovely salaries. I shouldn't select the life of an actress, but if--"