R II

THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK

When, with Ruth on my arm, I walked up the steps of the house and
unlocked the front door, I entered upon a new life. It was my first
taste of home since my mother died and added to that was this new love
which was 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'clock during the long summer days. Many the time even in June
Ruth and I ate our breakfast by lamp-light. It gave us an extra hour
and she was bred in the country where getting up in the morning is no
great hardship.

We couldn't afford a servant and we didn't want one. Ruth was a fine
cook and I certainly did justice to her dishes after ten years of
restaurants and boarding-houses. On rainy 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 it in the oven instead of coming home and finding it all done.
I used to fill up my pipe and sit by the kitchen stove until I had
just time to catch the train by sprinting.

But when the morning was fine we'd either take a long walk through the
big park reservation which was near the house or we'd fuss over the
garden. We had twenty-two inches of radishes, thirty-eight inches 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 and
planted sweet alyssum around the whole business. Everyone out here
planned to raise his own vegetables. It was supposed to cut down
expenses but I noticed the market man always did a good business.

I had met two or three of the men at the country club and they
introduced me to the others. We were all earning about the same
salaries and living in about the same type of house. Still there were
differences and you could tell more by the wives than the husbands
those whose salaries went over two thousand. Two or three 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 they looked comforta