“You are too kind!” Mrs. Turner responded, much pleased to have found, in her first boarders, such excellent, good-hearted people.

In a few days, a couple of young men made application, and were received, and now commenced the serious duties of the new undertaking.  Mary had to assume the whole care of the house.  She had to attend the markets, and oversee the kitchen, and also to make with her own hands all the pastry.  Still, she had, a willing heart, and this lightened much of the heavy burden now imposed upon her.

“How do you like your new boarding house?” asked a friend of one of the young men who had applied, and been received.  This was about two weeks after his entrance into Mrs. Turner’s house.

“Elegant,” responded the young man, giving his countenance a peculiar and knowing expression.

“Indeed?  But are you in earnest?”

“I am that.  Why, we live on the very fat of the land.”

“Pshaw! you must be joking.  Whoever heard of the fat of the land being found in a boarding house.  They can’t afford it.”

“I don’t care, myself, whether they can afford it or not.  But we do live elegantly.  I wouldn’t ask to sit down to a better table.”

“What kind of a room have you? and what kind of a bed?”

“Good enough for a lord.”

“Nonsense!”

“No, but I am in earnest, as I will prove to you.  I sleep on as fine a bed as ever I saw, laid on a richly carved mahogany bedstead, with beautiful curtains.  The floor is covered with a Brussels carpet, nearly new and of a rich pattern.  There is in the room a mahogany wardrobe, an elegant piece of furniture—­a marble top dressing bureau, and a mahogany wash-stand with a marble slab.  Now if you don’t call that a touch above a common boarding house, you’ve been more fortunate than I have been until lately.”

“Are there any vacancies there, Tom?”

“There is another bed in my room.”

Well, just tell them, to-night, that I’ll be there to-morrow morning.”

“Very well.”

“And I know of a couple more that’ll add to the mess, if there is room.”

“It’s a large house, and I believe they have room yet to spare.”

A week more passed away, and the house had its complement, six young men, and the polite gentleman and his wife.  This promised an income of thirty-one dollars per week.

As an off-set to this, a careful examination into the weekly expenditure would have shown a statement something like the following:  Marketing $12; groceries, flour, &c., $10; rent, $8; servants’ hire-cook, chambermaid, and black boy, $4; fuel, and incidental expenses, $6—­in all, $40 per week.  Besides this, their own clothes, and the schooling of the two boys did not cost less than at the rate of $300 per annum.  But neither Mrs. Turner nor Mary ever thought that any such calculation was necessary.  They charged what other boarding house keepers charged, and thought, of course, that they must make a good living.  But in no boarding house, even where much higher prices were obtained, was so much piled upon the table.