boy.  I tell you, Dr. Lively, I can’t economize any more than I do and have done.  I might wring and twist and screw in every possible direction, and at the year’s end there wouldn’t be a nickel to show for all the wringing and twisting and screwing.  There’s only one way in which the purse can be made up—­there’s only one way in which economy is possible.  You can save that money, Dr. Lively:  you’re the only member of the family who has a luxury.”

“Hang me with a grapevine if I’ve got any luxury!” said the doctor with something of an amused expression on his face.

“Tobacco,” suggested Napoleon.

“Yes, it’s tobacco.  You can give up the nasty weed, the filthy habit.”

“Do it?” asked Napoleon.

“Don’t think I shall,” replied the doctor coolly.

“Then I’ll save the money,” responded Mrs. Lively with heroic voice and manner.  “I had forgotten:  there is one other way.  Dr. Lively, I’m housekeeper, laundress, cook, everything to your family.  And what do I get for it?  Less than any twelve-year-old girl who goes out to service.  I have the blessed privilege of lodging in this old Mormon rat-hole, and I have just enough of the very cheapest victuals to keep the breath in my body; and one single, solitary thing that is not absolutely necessary to my existence—­one thing that I could possibly live without.”

“What?” asked Napoleon, gaping and staring.

“It is sugar—­sugar in my coffee.  I’ll drink my coffee without sugar till that sixty dollars is made up.  I’ll never touch sugar again till that money is made good—­never!” and into the kitchen sailed Mrs. Lively with her pan of dishes.

“Sugar, please,” demanded Napoleon the next morning at the breakfast-table.  Dr. Lively passed over the sugar-bowl.

“How can you have the heart to take so much?” said the mother, watching Napoleon as he emptied one heaping spoonful and then another into his coffee-cup.  “But I might have known you’d leave your mother to bear the burden all alone.  All the economizing, all the self-denial, must come on my shoulders.  And just look at me!—­nothing but skin and bones.  I’ve got to make up everybody’s losses, everybody’s wasting.  It’s a rare thing if I get a warm meal with the rest of you:  I’m all the while eating up the cold victuals and scraps and burnt things that nobody else will eat.”

“I’d eat ’em,” said Napoleon.

“Of course you’d eat them.  There’s nothing you wouldn’t eat, in the heavens above or the earth beneath.  And all the thanks I get is to be taunted with stinginess.”

“Take some?” asked Napoleon, passing the sugar-bowl to his mother.

“Never!” she exclaimed, drawing back as though a viper had been extended to her.  “Take the thing away—­set it down there by your father’s plate.  I said I’d use no more sugar till that money was made good.  When I say a thing I mean it.”

“Now, Priscilla,” remonstrated the doctor, “what is the use of breaking in on your lifelong habits?  You’ll make yourself sick, that’s all.”