One Way Out

DOLLARS

s finer than anything I had ever dreamed about. It seemed hard to have to leave every morning at half past six and not get back until after five at night, but to offset this we used to get up as early as four o'cl

iny days when we couldn't get out, she used to do her cooking early so that I might watch her. It seemed a lot more like her cooking when I saw her pat out the dough and put

hes of lettuce, four tomato plants, two hills of corn, three hills of beans and about four yards of early peas. In addition to this Ruth had squeezed a geranium into one corner and a fern into another

ee of the men were in banks, one was in a leather firm, one was an agent for an insurance company, another was with the telegraph company, another was with the Standard Oil, and two or three others were with firms like mine. Most of them had been settled out here three or four years and had children. In a general way

of them. There wasn't room in my life for anyone but Ruth at that time. I di

tertaining. Our grocery and meat bill amounted to from five to seven dollars a week. Of course I had my lunches in town but I got out of those for twenty cents. My daily car fare was twenty cents more which brought my total weekly expenses up to about three dollars. This left a comfortable margin of from five to seven dollars for light, coal, clothes and amusements. In the summer the first three items didn't amount to much so some weeks we put most of this into the furniture. But the city was new

our own lives every day was as fair as the first. My salary came as regularly as an annuity and there was every prospect for advancement. The garden did well and Ruth became acquainted with most of the women in a soc

t home but when she was out among others, they made her feel it. However spring came around again and we forgot all about those details. We didn't go in town so much that summer and used to spend more time on our piazza. I saw more of the men in this way and found them a pleasant, companionable lot. They asked me to join the Neighborhood Club and I did, more to meet them half way than because I wanted to. There w

ispered advice. She used to repeat it to me at night with a gay little laugh and her eyes sparkling like diamonds. She

ted me a notch higher. And with him he brought me a new wife in Ruth, without taking one wh

ered me out of the house. I went down to the club and I felt more one of the neighborhood that day than I ever did befo

numberless little things. But you'd have thought it was their house and not mine, the way they t

fter a fashion, for four dollars a week. But that wasn't by any means what she cost us. In spite of Ruth's supervision the girl wasted as much as she used so that our provision bill was nearly doubled. If we hadn't succeeded in paying for the furniture bef

pier to try anyway. How in the world she managed to do it I don't know but she did. This gave her an excuse for not going out-though it was

ain always a baby; he was going to grow into a boy and then a young man and before I knew it he would be facing the very same problem that now confronted me. And that problem was how to get enough ahead of the game to give him a fair start in life. I realized, too, that I wanted him to do something better than I

impossible to keep to ourselves as we had that first year. Little by little we had been drawn into the social life of the neighborhood. Not a month went by but what there was a dinner or two or a whist party or a dance. Personally I didn't care about such things but as Ruth had become a matron and in consequence had been thrown more in contact with the women, she had lost her shyness and grown more sociable. She often suggested declining an invitation but

in the office. Mechanical adding machines had cost a dozen men their jobs; a card system of bookkeeping had made it possible to discharge another dozen, while an off year in woollens sent two or three more flying, among them the man who had found me the position in the first place. But he hadn't married and he w

with the work of the man above me and was on very good terms with him. I waited patiently and confidently for the day when Morse should call me in and announce his own advance and leave me to fill his place. I might

onderful how rich Ruth contrived to make us feel. She knew how to take care of things and though I didn't spend half what some of the men spent on their suits, I went in town every morning looking better than two-thirds of them. I was inspected from head to foot before I started and there wasn't a wrinkle o

stylishly without really doing so. She had beautiful hair and this in itse

when he began to trudge off every morning at nine o'clock. She began to look forward to Saturdays as eagerly as the boy did. Then the ne

he was, in a small way, living his own life now which left Ruth and me to ourselves once more. She used to go over for me all the details of his day from the time she took him up in the morning until she tucked him away in bed again at night and then there would come a pause. It seemed as though there ought to be something more, but there wasn't. The next few

ss father and mother,' a

ord, as it was I hadn't been able to save a dollar. I knew that we were simply holding on tight and drifting. The boat was loaded to the gunwales even now. And ye

e have, Bil

fireplace which we didn't light more than once a month now

too wanted a hou

ng I was leaving her all alone with the one away at school. And what a

e of them were not so lucky as we and ran into debt while a few of them were luckier and were helped out with legacies or by well-to-do relatives. We were as much alike as peas in a pod. We were living on the future and bluffing out the present. You'd have thought it would have cast a gloom over the neighborhood-you'd have thought it would have done away with some of the parties and dances. But it didn't. In the first place this was, to most of us, just life. In the second place there didn't seem to be any alternative. There was no other way of living. The conditions seemed to b

some way out of this social business. It seemed such a pitiful waste of ammunition under the circumstances. I wanted to save the money if it was possible in any way to eke it out, for his education. But what could I do? The boy had to live as his friends lived or give them up. He wasn't asked to do any more than the other boys of the ne

start in and plan how we'd spend it. It took the edge off the immediate thought of danger. In the meanwhile I resigned even from the Neighborhood Club an

to have it more cosmopolitan. The boy was rubbing up against only his own kind and this was making him soft, both physically and mentally. He was also getting querulous and autocratic. Ruth saw it, but with only one.... Well, on Sundays I took the boy with me on long cross-country jaunts and did a good deal of talking to him. But all I said rolled off like water off