"It would be much cheaper to shut up the flat. Then we should be really saving. And--Harry--it is necessary!" Then the truth came out, and with it the real reason why Mrs. Ringrose wished him to accept the cheap mastership at Teddington. She was trying to keep house upon a hundred and fifty a year; so far she was failing terribly. The rent of the flat was sixty-five; that left eighty-five pounds a year, or but little over thirty shillings a week for all expenses. It was true they kept no servant, but the porter's wife charged five shillings a week, and when the washing was paid there was seldom more than a pound over, even when the stockings and the handkerchiefs were done at home. A pound a week to feed and clothe the two of them! It sounded ample--the tailors had not even sent in their bill yet--and yet somehow it was lamentably insufficient. Mrs. Ringrose had been a rich woman all her life until now; that was the whole secret of the matter. Even Harry, ready as he still was for an extravagance, was in everyday minutiæ more practical than his dear mother. She never called in the porter without giving him a shilling. She seldom paid for anything at the door without slipping an additional trifle into the recipient's hand. And once when some Highlanders played their bagpipes and danced their sword-dances in the back street below, she flung a florin through the window because she had no smaller silver, and to give coppers she was ashamed. Harry was the last to take exception to traits which he had himself inherited, but he had long foreseen that disaster must come unless he could earn something to add to their income, and so balance the bread he ate and the tea he swallowed. And now disaster had come, insomuch that the next quarter's money was condemned, and Harry's duty was clear. Yet still he temporised. "A month ago it would have been bad enough," said he; "but surely we might hang together now that I have got a start. Ten bob a week! You shall see me creep up to a pound and then to two!" "You must first make sure of the ten bob," said Mrs. Ringrose, who had a quaint way of echoing her son's slang, and whose sanguine temperament had been somewhat damped by late experience. "I am sure of it. Are not three weeks running good enough?" "But you say they only take you an hour, and that you could spare at the school, even though you had to do it in your own bedroom. Besides, it need only be for one term if you didn't like it; to economise till Christmas, that is all I ask." Harry knew what he ought to say. He was troubled and vexed at his own perverseness. Yet all his instincts told him that he was finding a footing at last--humble enough, Heaven knew!--on the ladder to which he felt most drawn. And a man does not go against his instincts in a moment. "Come, my boy," urged Mrs. Ringrose. "Send the telegram and be done with it." "Wait!" cried Harry, as the bell rang. "There's the post. It may be that my story is accepted."