In the three years preceding his marriage, he had saved enough to buy the furniture with which they were enabled to go to housekeeping, in a small way; but, since then, it took every dollar to meet their wants.
"In case of sickness and the running up of a large doctor's bill, what should I do ?" he would sometimes ask himself, anxiously; "or, suppose I were thrown out of employment ?" These questions always made him feel serious.

The prospect of a still further increase in his family caused him to be really troubled.
"It is just as much as I can now do to make both ends meet," he would say, despondingly, and sometimes give utterance to such expressions even in the presence of his wife.

Mrs.Bancroft was not a woman very deeply read in the prevailing philosophies of the day; but she had a simple mode of reasoning, or rather of concluding, on most subjects that came up for her special consideration.

On this matter, in particular, so perplexing to her husband, her very satisfactory solution to the difficulty, was this-- "He that sends mouths, will be sure to send something to fill them." There was, in this trite and homely mode of settling the matter, something conclusive, for the time, even to Mr.Bancroft.But doubt, distrust and fear, were his besetting sins, and in a little while, would come back to disturb his mind, and throw a shadow even over the sweet delights of home.
"If there was to be no more increase of family, we could do very well," he would often say to himself; "but how we are to manage with another baby, is more than I am able to see." But all this trouble upon interest availed not.

The baby came, and was received with the delight such visits always produce, even where there is already a house full of children.