silently
gripped my hand.

The women, too, seemed to take a new interest in us. When Ruth was
able to sit up they brought in numberless little things. But you'd
have thought it was their house and not mine, the way they treated me.
When any of them came I felt as though I didn't belong there and ought
to tip-toe out.

We'd been saving up during the summer for this emergency so that we
had enough to pay for the doctor and the nurse but that was only the
beginning of the new expenses. In the first place we had to have a
servant now. I secured a girl who knew how to cook after 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 before this I don't know what we would
have done. As it was I found my salary pretty well strained. I hadn't
any idea that so small a thing as a baby could cost so much. Ruth had
made most of his things but I know that some of his shirts cost as
much as mine.

When the boy was older Ruth insisted upon getting along without a girl
again. I didn't approve of this but I saw that it would make her
happier 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 an excuse that made me half ashamed of myself--and so we saved in
another way. Even with this we just made both ends meet and that was
all.

The boy grew like a weed and before I knew it he was five years old.
Until he began to walk and talk I didn't think of him as a possible
man. He didn't seem like anything in particular. He was just soft and
round and warm. But when he began to wear knickerbockers he set me to
thinking hard. He wasn't going to remain 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 had done. When I stopped to think of it I had
accomplished mighty little. I had lived and that was about all. That I
had lived happily was due to Ruth. But if I was finding difficulty in
keeping even with the game now, what was I going to do when the
youngster would prove a decidedly more serious item of expense?