figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.
His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself-- a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen-- was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living.