"Oh, dear," said Francesca, "everything keeps going up." She was engaged upon the weekly books and spoke in a tone of heartfelt despair.

"Well," I said, "you've known all along how it would be. Everybody's told you so."

"Everybody? Who's everybody in this case?"

"I told you so for one, and Mr. Asquith mentioned it several times, and so did Mr. McKenna."

"I have never," she said proudly, "discussed my weekly books with Messrs. Asquith and McKenna. I should scorn the action."

"That's all very well," I said. "Keep them away as far as you can, but they'll still get hold of you. The Chancellor of the Exchequer knows your weekly books by heart."

"I wish," she said, "he'd add them up for me. He's a good adder-up, I suppose, or he wouldn't be what he is."

"He's fair to middling, I fancy—something like me."

"You!" she said, in a tone of ineffable contempt. "You're no good at addition."

"Francesca," I said, "you wrong me. I'm a great deal of good. Of course I don't pretend to be able to run three fingers up three columns of figures a yard long and to write down the result as £7,956 17s. 8d., or whatever it may be, without a moment's pause. I can't do that, but for the ordinary rough-and-tumble work of domestic addition I'm hard to beat. Only if I'm to do these books of yours there must be perfect silence in the room. I mustn't be talked to while I'm wrestling with the nineteens and the seventeens in the shilling column."

"In fact," said Francesca, "you ought to be a deaf adder."

"Francesca," I said, "how could you? Give me the butcher's book and let there be no more jeux de mots between us."

I took the book, which was a masterpiece of illegibility, and added it up with my usual grace and felicity.

"Francesca," I said as I finished my task, "my total differs from the butcher's, but the difference is in his favour, not in mine. He seems to have imparted variety to his calculations by considering that it took twenty pence to make a shilling, which is a generous error. Now let me deal with the baker while you tackle the grocer, and then we'll wind up by doing the washing-book together."

The washing-book was a teaser, the items being apparently entered in Chaldee, but we stumbled through it at last.

"And now," I said, "we can take up the subject of thrift."

"I don't want to talk about it," she said, "I'm thoroughly tired of it. We've talked too much about it already."

"You're wrong there; we haven't talked half enough. If we had, the books wouldn't have gone up."

"They haven't gone up," she said. "They're about the same, but we've been having less."

"Noble creature," I said, "do you mean to say that you've docked me of one of my Sunday sausages and the whole of my Thursday roly-poly pudding and never said a word about it?"

"Well, you didn't seem to notice it, so I left it alone."

"Ah, but I did notice it," I said, "but I determined to suffer in silence in order to set an example to the children."

"That was bravely done," she said. "It encourages me to cut down the Saturday sirloin."

"But what will the servants say? They won't like it."

"They'll have to lump it then."

"But I thought servants never lumped it. I thought they always insisted on their elevenses and all their other food privileges."

"Anyhow," she said, "I'm going to make a push for economy and the servants must push with me. They won't starve, whatever happens."

"No, and if they begin to object you can talk to them about tonnage."

"That ought to bowl them over. But hadn't I better know what it means before I mention it?"

"Yes, that might be an advantage."

"You see," she said, "Mrs. Mincer devotes to the reading of newspapers all the time she can spare from the cooking of meals and she'd be sure to trip me up if I ventured to say anything about tonnage."

"Learn then," I said, "that tonnage means the amount of space reserved for cargoes on ships—at least I suppose that's what it means, and——"

"You don't seem very sure about it. Hadn't you better look it up?"

"No," I said. "That's good enough for Mrs. Mincer. Now if there's an insufficiency of tonnage——"

"But why should there be an insufficiency of tonnage?"

"Because," I said, "the Government have taken up so much tonnage for the purposes of the War. How did you think the Army got supplied with food and shells and guns and men? Did you think they flew over to France and Egypt and Salonica?"

"Don't be rude," she said. "I didn't introduce this question of tonnage. You did. And even now I don't see what tonnage has got to do with our sirloin of beef."

"I will," I said kindly, "explain it to you all over again. We have ample tonnage for necessaries, but not for luxuries."

"But my sirloin of beef isn't a luxury."

"For the purpose of my argument," I said, "it is a luxury and must be treated as such."

"Do you know," she said, "I don't think I'll bother about tonnage. I'll tackle Mrs. Mincer in my own way."

"You're throwing away a great opportunity," I said.

"Never mind," she said. "If I feel I'm being beaten I'll call you in. Your power of lucid explanation will pull me through."

R.C.L.