ite suspicion at any time.
She kept me uneasy for ten minutes and the best I could do was to
admit finally that I wasn't feeling very well. Whereupon she made me
go to bed and fussed over me all the evening and worried all the next
day.

I reported for work as usual in the morning and found we had a new
foreman. It was a relief because I guess if Dan hadn't knocked down
the other one, someone else would have done it sooner or later. At
that the man had taught me something about sewer gas and that is when
you begin to feel dizzy fifty feet below the street, it's time to go
up the ladder about as fast as your wobbly legs will let you, even if
you don't smell anything.

Rafferty didn't turn up for two or three days. When he did appear it
was with a simple:

"Mawnin, mon."

It wasn't until several days later I learned that the late foreman had
left town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as might
have been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of a
small ham.

On Saturday night of that first week I came home with nine dollars in
my pocket. I'll never be prouder again than I was when I handed them
over to Ruth. And Ruth will never again be prouder than she was when,
after she had laid aside three of them for the rent and five for
current expenses, she picked out a one-dollar bill and, crossing the
room, placed it in the ginger jar. This was a little blue affair in
which we had always dropped what pennies and nickels we could spare.

"There's our nest-egg," she announced.

"You don't mean to tell me you're that much ahead of the game the
first week?"

"Look here, Billy," she answered.

She brought out an itemized list of everything she had bought from
last Monday, including Sunday's dinner. I've kept that list. Many of
the things she had bought were not yet used up but she had computed
the cost of the amount actually used. Here it is as I copied it off:

Flour, .25
Lard, .15
Cream of tartar and soda, .05
Oat meal, .04
Molasses, .05
Sugar, .12
Potatoes, .20
Rice, .06
Milk, 1.12
Eggs, .24
Rye bread, .10
Sausages, .22
Lettuce, .03
Beans, .12
Salt pork, .15
Corn meal, .06
Graham meal, .05
Butter, .45
Cheese, .06
Shin of beef, .39
Fish, .22
Oil, .28
Soap, .09
Vinegar, salt and pepper, about .05
Can of corn, .07
Onions, .06
Total $4.68

In this account, too, Ru