“Yes, sir,” said she.  But she no sooner comprehended the check system fully than she gave warning.  It put a stop to her wholesale pilfering.  Rosa’s cooks had made fully a hundred pounds out of her amongst them since she began to keep accounts.

Under the male housekeeper every article was weighed on delivery, and this soon revealed that the butcher and the fishmonger had habitually delivered short weight from the first, besides putting down the same thing twice.  The things were sent back that moment, with a printed form, stating the nature and extent of the fraud.

The washerwoman, who had been pilfering wholesale so long as Mrs. Staines and her sloppy-headed maids counted the linen, and then forgot it, was brought up with a run, by triplicate forms, and by Staines counting the things before two witnesses, and compelling the washerwoman to count them as well, and verify or dispute on the spot.  The laundress gave warning—­a plain confession that stealing had been part of her trade.

He kept the house well for three pounds a week, exclusive of coals, candles, and wine.  His wife had had five pounds, and whatever she asked for dinner-parties, yet found it not half enough upon her method.

He kept no coachman.  If he visited a patient, a man in the yard drove him at a shilling per hour.

By these means, and by working like a galley slave, he dragged his expenditure down almost to a level with his income.

Rosa was quite content at first, and thought herself lucky to escape reproaches on such easy terms.

But by and by so rigorous a system began to gall her.  One day she fancied a Bath bun; sent the new maid to the pastry-cook’s.  Pastry-cook asked to see the doctor’s order.  Maid could not show it, and came back bunless.

Rosa came into the study to complain to her husband.

“A Bath bun,” said Staines.  “Why, they are colored with annotto, to save an egg, and annotto is adulterated with chromates that are poison.  Adulteration upon adulteration.  I’ll make you a real Bath bun.”  Off coat, and into the kitchen, and made her three, pure, but rather heavy.  He brought them her in due course.  She declined them languidly.  She was off the notion, as they say in Scotland.

“If I can’t have a thing when I want it, I don’t care for it at all.”  Such was the principle she laid down for his future guidance.

He sighed, and went back to his work; she cleared the plate.

One day, when she asked for the carriage, he told her the time was now come for her to leave off carriage exercise.  She must walk with him every day, instead.

“But I don’t like walking.”

“I am sorry for that.  But it is necessary to you, and by and by your life may depend on it.”

Quietly, but inexorably, he dragged her out walking every day.

In one of these walks she stopped at a shop window, and fell in love with some baby’s things.  “Oh!  I must have that,” said she.  “I must.  I shall die if I don’t; you’ll see now.”