course; her trouble was that the Fielding name was perhaps a
trifle too surely connected with fabulous sums of money. And Mary
Ingram could afford anything, despite her simple clothes and her
fancy for long tramps and quiet evenings with her delicate husband
and two big boys. Nancy sometimes wondered that with the Ingram
income anyone could be satisfied with Marlborough Gardens, but
after all, what was there better in all the world? Europe?--but
that meant hotel cooking for the man. Nancy visualized an
apartment in a big city hotel, a bungalow in California, a villa
in Italy, and came back to the Gardens. Nothing was finer than
this.

"If we could only appreciate it!" she said again, sighing. "And if
we need only see the people we like--and if time didn't fly so!"
And of course if there were more money! She reflected that if she
might go back a few years, to the time of their arrival at the
Gardens, she might build far more wisely for her own happiness and
Bert's. They had been drawn in, they had followed the crowd, it
was impossible to withdraw now. Nancy knew that something was
troubling Bert in these days, she guessed it to be the one real
cause for worry. She began almost to hope that he felt financial
trouble near, it would be a relief to fling aside, the whole
pretence to say openly and boldly, "we must economize," and to go
back to honest, simple living again. They could rent Holly Court--

Fired with enthusiasm, she looked for her check book, and for
Bert's, and with the counterfoils before her made some long
calculations. The result horrified her. She and Bert between them
had spent ten thousand dollars in twelve months. Nearly ten times
the sum upon which they had been so happy, years ago! The loans