COMMUTER'S WIFE 133 



week to restore these hardy beds to order, but 

 luckily the " extras " are a birthday gift and do not 

 have to be recorded and extracted, or I should say 

 subtracted, from godmother's fifty pounds. Though 

 really I suppose I should credit the garden account 

 with them, all the same, if we are to keep track of 

 what it costs. But why keep a garden account and 

 reckon the cost of pure joy? Is it not cheap at 

 any price ? 



But, on the other hand, if I do not keep the real- 

 izing sense of cost before me, I may be tempted 

 some day to write a delusive book upon how to 

 run a country home, horse and cow inclusive, on 

 ten dollars a week, supply a family of ten with 

 vegetables grown in a city plot, or give minute in- 

 structions as to the way a cripple may support him- 

 self by raising roses for market from cuttings 

 obtained from withered bouquets, in a greenhouse 

 glazed with castaway photograph plates and heated 

 by a kerosene lamp! 



I may not be wholly sane in my regard for 

 money. In childhood a dollar did not mean a 

 hundred cents, but twenty packets of flower-seeds; 

 ten cents, a clump of pansies, a verbena, or a small 

 geranium ; while twenty-five cents stood for a helio- 

 trope, a Fuchsia, or a tea-rose in forced and conse- 



