With the rent paid, we should have eighty-seven dollars a month left to live on.  The grocery bill, at that time, would not run more than twenty dollars a month; telephone, gas, and electric light would not exceed ten dollars a month; the milkman and the paper boy would take but little, and in winter time a ton of coal per month would be sufficient.  Oh, we should have plenty of money, and could easily afford to pledge twenty dollars a month to pay for necessary furniture.

It will be noticed that into our dreaming came no physician, no dentist, no expenses bobbing up from unexpected sources.  Not a single bill collector called at the front door of our dream castle to ask for money which we did not have.

If older and wiser heads suggested the possibility of danger, we produced our plans on paper, and asked them from whence could trouble come?  To-day we understand the depth of the kindly smile which our protests always evoked.  They were letting the dreamers dream.

At last the furniture was bought on the installment plan and the new flat was being put in order.  It called for a few more pieces of furniture than we had figured on, and the debt, in consequence, was greater; but that meant merely a few months more to make payments.

It was fine furniture, too!  Of course it has long since ceased to serve us; but never in this world shall that dining set be duplicated!  For perfection of finish and loveliness of design, that first oak dining table will linger in our memories for life.  The one we now have cost more than all the money we spent for all the furniture with which we began housekeeping; and yet, figuring according to the joy it has brought to us, it is poor in comparison.

And so it was, too, with the mahogany settee, upholstered in green plush, and the beveled glass dresser, and the living-room chairs.  We used to make evening trips over to that flat merely for the joy of admiring these things—­our things; the first we had ever possessed.

Then came the night of June 27th.  We had both looked forward to that wonderful honeymoon trip up the lakes to Mackinac Island, and tomorrow we were to start.  But right then I am sure that both Mother and I wished we might call it off.  It seemed so foolish to go away from such a beautiful flat and such lovely furniture.

The honeymoon trip lasted two weeks; and one day, at Mackinac Island, I found Mother in tears.

“What the matter?” I asked.

“I want to go home!” she said.  “I know I am silly and foolish, but I want to get back to our own house and our own furniture, and arrange our wedding presents, and hang the curtains, and put that set of Haviland china in the cabinet!”

So back we came to begin our home-building in earnest.

The rent and the furniture installments came due regularly, just as we had expected.  So did the gas and electric light and telephone bills.  But, somehow or other, our dream figures and the actual realities did not balance.  There never was a month when there was as much left of our eighty-seven dollars as we had figured there should have been.