t for work Monday at such and such
a place. I asked him what the work was and he looked up.

"Subway," he answered.

I asked him how much the pay was. He looked me over at this. I don't
know what he thought I was.

"Dollar and a half--nine hours."

"All right," I answered.

He gave me a slip of paper and I hurried out. It hadn't taken ten
minutes. And a dollar and a half a day was nine dollars a week! It was
almost twice as much as I had started on with the United; it was over
a third of what I had been getting after my first ten years of hard
work with them. It seemed too good to be true. Taking out the rent,
this left me six dollars for food. That was as much as it had cost
Ruth and me the first year we were married. There was no need of going
hungry on that.

I came back home jubilant. Ruth at first took the prospect of my
digging in a ditch a bit hard, but that was only because she
contrasted it with my former genteel employment.

"Why, girl," I explained, "it's no more than I would have to do if we
took a homestead out west. I'd as soon dig in Massachusetts as
Montana."

She felt of my arm. It's a big arm. Then she smiled. It was the last
time she mentioned the subject.

We didn't say anything to the neighbors until the furniture began to
go out. Then the women flocked in and Ruth was hard pressed to keep
our secret. I sat upstairs and chuckled as I heard her replies. She
says it's the only time I ever failed to stand by her, but it didn't
seem to me like anything but a joke.

"We shall want to keep track of you," said little Mrs. Grover. "Where
shall we address you?"

"Oh, I can't tell," answered Ruth, truthfully enough.

"Are you going far?"

"Yes. Oh--a long, long way."

That was true enough too. We couldn't have gone farther out of their
lives if we'd sailed for Australia.

And so they kept it up. That night we made a round of the houses and
everyone was very much surprised and very much grieved and very
curious. To all their inquiries, I made the same reply; that I was
going to emigrate. Some of them looked wistful.

"Jove," said Brown, who was with the insurance company, "but I wish I
had the nerve to do that. I suppose you're going west?"

"We're going west first," I answered.

The road to the station was almost due west.

"They say there are great chances out in that country," he said. "It
isn't so overcrowded as here."

"I don't know about that," I answered, "but there are chanc