Every Thing Comfortable by Oliver Optic

For the first time in her housekeeping experience, Mrs. Sparrow felt a little discontented, after her sister-in-law had gone. Her pleasant little house looked smaller than ever before; its plain, substantial furniture looked coarse and common. Why couldn't her husband have some of the fine things that other people had? Why couldn't she have a carved rosewood table, antique chairs, a tapestry carpet, and velvet draperies at the windows? Her husband owned the house in which they lived, and had over a thousand dollars in the bank. Mrs. Walbend, in the next house, had all these fine things, and her husband got but a thousand dollars a year, while Mr. Swallow got fifteen hundred.

"Charles," said she, when her husband came home to tea that evening, "I have been thinking of something."