This afternoon a lady called to look at rooms.

She had a little girl with her, perhaps a couple of years older than Robin. She said that she had been recommended to us,—by Mrs. Hudson!

Ernie let them in, and galloped upstairs to tell mother. You can imagine our excitement.

“Hush!” whispered Ernie, as she and I crouched behind the half-closed nursery door, listening with all our ears. “She told me the location was what she wanted. Oh, Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”

At that moment the lady swept on her way downstairs.

“The terms seem reasonable enough,” we heard her observe, “and the room is sunny and pleasant. I should want a comfortable cot placed in it for Lilian,”—the little girl. “You have children of your own, Mrs. Graham?” Then, stopping in the lower hall,—

“Is that an invalid chair?” she asked, abruptly.

“Yes,” returned mother. “It belongs to my little son;—he is not at all well this winter.”

“And his trouble?” There was no hint of sympathy in the question.

“Hip complaint,” replied mother. “Robin has not been strong since he was a baby.”

“In that case, I am sorry, but it will be impossible to engage the room,” came the unexpected reply. “Lilian is a very sensitive child,—and, naturally, my first consideration. I make it a rule to shield her from every depressing influence. Let me see,—there are three other places on our list. If we hurry, we can make time to visit them this afternoon. Good-day, Mrs. Graham.” The door closed sharply on our prospective boarders.

And this on a Friday,—the bluest day in the week!

Mother’s face was quite white and stern as she came upstairs.

“If you will get dinner, Elizabeth, I’ll stay with Robin,” she said. And she took Bobsie in her arms, and carried him tenderly to the big rocker in the window, while Ernie and I crept, mouse-like, from the room.

“One might have known she was a friend of Mrs. Hudson,” remarked Ernie, vindictively, as we reached the foot of the basement stairs. “Depressing influence, indeed! I’d like to depress her precious Lilian for her!”

“Oh, Ernie,” I sighed. “It would have meant fifteen dollars more each week!”

We were to have beefsteak for dinner. Mother had gone around earlier in the afternoon to a cheap little butcher shop (we can’t afford our old tradesmen any longer), and bought two pounds,—spending our last forty cents. There were four potatoes in the oven, a few beans on the top of the stove,—but no bread.

“Mother shan’t be disturbed,” I cried. “I’ll run around to the baker’s, myself, and get a loaf. I’ll say that I left my purse at home (which will be perfectly true, and, under the circumstances, eminently sensible!) and that they can charge it. Keep an eye on the steak, Ernie, and the fire. I’ve just put on a couple of sticks of wood.”

“All right,” answered Ernie, from where she sat on the table, dejectedly swinging her legs and muttering over an open Geography. “I’ll watch it.”

Yet when I returned from my errand some few moments later it was to find the kitchen full of smoke. In the middle of the floor pranced Ernie, frantically blowing upon a smutty and spluttering gridiron, while the red flames leapt hungrily through the open top of the stove.

“What have you done?” I cried, snatching the gridiron from Ernie’s blackened fingers. “That steak is burned to a cinder! It’s Friday night. There isn’t any more money. Do you realise what this means?”

“Oh dear! oh dear! I was bounding the British Isles!” wailed Ernie. “And the fire didn’t come up,—till all of a sudden everything began to blaze! Of course, I realise, Elizabeth. Can’t we scrape it, or something?”

“No,” I answered, transferring the hopelessly charred bit of steak to the big blue platter. “It is burned quite through,—and to-morrow is Saturday. How can we expect Miss Brown to keep on paying seven dollars a week,—once she finds out that we are unable to feed her?”

“Then chop off my head and boil it for her old dinner,” sobbed Ernie, entirely overcome by this last, unlooked-for disaster, for which she could not but hold herself responsible. “Nobody’d miss it,—about the house, I mean,—and they used to eat such things once,—in the British Isles!”

“What is the matter?” asked mother, entering the kitchen at this moment with Robin’s tray, and looking from one tragic-faced daughter to the other. “Has anything new happened?”

“The steak is burned,” I explained, briefly. “There are only beans and four potatoes left for dinner.”

“Chop off my head,” reiterated poor little Ernie. “I deserve it. I was bounding the British Isles,—and forgot to watch. I wish, I wish that I’d never been born!”

And then it was that mother “rose,” buoyantly, unexpectedly, as she can always be depended upon doing, if only the situation is desperate enough.

“Never mind, darlings,” she cried, with an airy little laugh. “Why,—it’s nothing but a beefsteak, after all. We’ll buy another!”

“Another!” I gasped, as if mother were contemplating the purchase of a diamond tiara.

“Another!” wondered Ernie.

“Certainly,” returned mother, quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world she was proposing. “And some pickles, because Miss Brown enjoys them,—and perhaps some chocolate creams!”

“But, mother,” I remonstrated. “It’s Friday night! We have spent our last penny. You surely are not going to borrow of Uncle George,—after the things he’s said!”

“No,” denied mother, succinctly. “There can be no compromise on that score. On the contrary, we’ll reap a little belated benefit from one of dear father’s follies.”

And she led the way to the library (Ernie and I following in a state of stunned but admiring bewilderment), and selected a large, handsomely bound volume from the lowest shelf of the old mahogany bookcase:—

“It is Picturesque Europe,” mother explained. “And your father paid six dollars for it, because the agent was a young widow with pathetic blue eyes, who assured him it would be of invaluable assistance in broadening Hazard’s mind. Haze was two years old at the time, and nobody has read it since;—but it is going to be of some use, at last, and help us to another dinner!”

So she and Ernie hustled into their things, and hurried around the block to the little second-hand bookshop where father used to snoop in happy by-gone days;—and when they returned Ernie was quite beaming and rosy again; for they brought three pounds of steak with them, instead of two, as well as a jar of pickles, and a pound of chocolate creams,—which last was nothing more nor less than a blatant extravagance, and put us all into uproarious spirits for the rest of the evening. And though Mrs. Hudson’s friend was certainly horrid, and it is hard to be so poor that the singeing of a beefsteak threatens dire calamity,—just think how splendid it is to have such a wonder of a mother!

Yes, Haze and I are agreed, there are compensations in every lot.