did have any sickness--we lived too sanely for
that. But just as our new viewpoint on Dick relieved us of a tension
which before had sapped our strength, so it was a great relief to have
such insurance as this in the background of our minds. It took all
the curse off sickness that it's possible to take off. In three or
four such ways as these a load of responsibility was removed from us
and we were left free to apply all our energy to the task of
upbuilding which we had in hand.

This may account somewhat for the reserve strength which Ruth as well
as myself seemed to tap. Then of course the situation as a whole was
such as to make any woman with imagination buoyant. Ruth had an active
part in making a big rosy dream come true. She was now not merely a
passive agent. She wasn't economizing merely to make the salary cover
the current expenses. Her task was really the vital one of the whole
undertaking; she was accumulating capital. When you stop to think of
it she was the brains of the business; I was only the machine. I dug
the money out of the ground but that wouldn't have amounted to much if
it had all gone for nothing except to keep the machine moving from day
to day. The dollar she saved was worth more than a hundred dollars
earned and spent again. It was the only dollar which counted. They say
a penny saved is a penny earned. To my mind a penny saved was worth
to us at this time every cent of a dollar.

So Ruth was not only an active partner but there was another side to
the game that appealed to her.

"The thing I like about our life down here," she said to me one night,
"is the chance it gives me to get something of myself into every
single detail of the home."

I didn't know what she meant because it seemed to me that was just
what she had always done. But she shook her head when I said so.

"No," she said. "Not the way I can now."

"Well, you didn't have a servant and must have done whatever was
done," I said.

"I didn't have time to pick out the food for the table," she said. "I
had to order it of the grocery man. I didn't have time to make as many
of your clothes as I wanted. Why I didn't even have time to plan."

"If anyone had told me that a woman could do any more than you then
were doing, I should have laughed at them," I said.

"You and the boy weren't all my own then," she said. "I had to waste a
great deal of time on things outside the house. Sometimes it used to
make me feel as though you