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After all, what did giving up the motor for the winter really mean to me?—although it cost me not a cent less than twelve dollars a day; or my vacuousfaced English butler and footman-why were they not in Flanders?-or the few clubs on Fifth Avenue, whose portals I rarely entered; or my seats at the opera-heretofore often occupied by indigent female relatives; or the elaborate cuisine we had previously been accustomed to maintain chiefly for the gastronomical entertainment of the ten voracious men and maid servants who had hitherto made our house their home, their restaurant, and their club?

In reality, nothing at all. I should not even be inconvenienced by any of these reductions. In point of fact, I could surrender, with entire equanimity, the

idea of having a cottage at the seaside, since I was infinitely more contented in my own home, and commuting tired me to death. There was not an item on our revised budget that needed to be a penny larger for our entire comfort. And yet we should save over fifteen thousand dollars a year and be living quite within my income-war-taxes included.

It set me thinking. I dare say it set Helen thinking, too. What did our previous expenditure of that fifteen thousand dollars represent? Our dependence on a conventional luxury that was really not luxury at all, but an impediment to freedom! It was the price we had paid simply to live like our friends; to be thought well off and successful. Yet we were ill off. We had ceased to know the verve that comes only from constant physical activity; we had lost spring, bodily and mental; our moral and physical attack; our ability to handle ourselves—in a word, our efficiency. We had lost the mastery of our own souls at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars a year.

Along with this I experienced the somewhat less meritorious reflection that if I could get along on fifteen thousand dollars less when my earning capacity was entirely cut off, I should achieve wealth when that income should be restored. Should I ever again be satisfied to pay fifteen thousand dollars a year just to oil the machinery of my existence? Why, what

could I not do for myself and for others with such a sum of money? Was I, in fact, giving up anything? To this extent the war had proved a blessing instead of a burden. I was making no real sacrifice.

Through the smoke wreaths rising from my pipe my eye caught in the window the gentle swaying of the red flag with its single blue star. I turned to find Helen was gazing at it also.

"John," she said slowly, "I've been thinking that, after all, we're not going to do enough. We've only been planning how to live on our income. I read today that there was danger the Liberty Loan might not be fully subscribed. Think what it would mean if we sent hundreds of thousands of our young men over to fight and didn't give them the proper backing! It would be terrible! We ought to subscribe to the loan, whether we have the money or not; no matter whether we see our way clear to do it or not. Everybody ought to save every cent and lend it to the government. Don't you think we ought to subscribe for at least twenty thousand dollars?"

"If you tried to save twenty thousand dollars more," I retorted, "you would have to go and live in a boarding-house on a side street! I don't suppose we shall have to save it, though. We can sell some securities and lend Uncle Sam the money. We'll have to take quite a loss."

"I don't mind!" she answered. "Nothing is really

a sacrifice that doesn't hurt. Next to wearing a uniform, I guess the proudest badge of honor any of us can have is going to be a shabby suit of clothes."

We sat there without saying anything more until the room fell into shadow and the street-lamp across the way was lighted. I was just going to suggest that we go out to dinner somewhere when the front door-bell rang sharply.

Thinking it might be a telegram, I went downstairs and opened the door. Outside stood a tall figure in khaki. Messenger-boys did not dress like that now-did they? Then I felt myself being hugged violently and heard Jack's voice shouting:

"Hello, dad! It's ripping to have you back again! How's mother? And isn't it great that the regiment sails week after next!"

II

MY HOUSEHOLD

Helen, Margery, and I had our breakfast next morning of coffee and rolls served in the sunny window of the sitting-room by Mrs. Gavin, our caretaker. During the preceding evening, while Jack had been with us, we had thought of nothing but the hideous gap his pending departure for France would make in our family circle; but now that he had gone back to camp we had time to face the concrete problems the war had evolved for us.

It had been the first night we had spent in our own home for nearly a year, and this was the dawn of a new sort of existence. Heretofore we had taken no thought of the morrow or, for that matter, of to-day. When we opened the house in the autumn we simply telegraphed to a firm of professional house-cleaners to come with their vacuum tubes, their rotary sweepers, their acids and varnishes, and get the place readyusually at a cost of about three hundred dollars. Then we sent on ahead five or six servants, including the cook, to prepare the way, and arrived, in due course, in a perfectly ordered and well-running establishment.

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