ve worn the stockings had not her skirt now been
well below her shoetops. Also, her shoes, in spite of the money
she had spent upon them, were about to burst round the edges of
the soles. But she would not longer accept from the Brashears
what she regarded as charity.

"You more than pay your share, what with the work you do,"
protested Mrs. Brashear. "I'll not refuse the extra dollar
because I've simply got to take it. But I don't want to pertend."

The restaurant receipts began to fall with the increasing
hardness of the times among the working people. Soon it was down
to practically no profit at all--that is, nothing toward the
rent. Tom Brashear was forced to abandon his policy of honesty,
to do as all the other purveyors were doing--to buy cheap stuff
and to cheapen it still further. He broke abruptly with his
tradition and his past. It aged him horribly all in a few
weeks--but, at least, ruin was put off. Mrs. Brashear had to
draw twenty of the sixty-three dollars which were in the savings
bank against sickness. Funerals would be taken care of by the
burial insurance; each member of the family, including Susan,
had a policy. But sickness had to have its special fund; and it
was frequently drawn upon, as the Brashears knew no more than
their neighbors about hygiene, and were constantly catching the
colds of foolish exposure or indigestion and letting them
develop into fevers, bad attacks of rheumatism, stomach trouble,
backache all regarded by them as by their neighbors as a
necessary part of the routine of life. Those tenement people had
no more notion of self-restraint than had the "better classes"
whose self-indulgences maintain the vast army of doctors and
druggists. The only thing that saved Susan from all but an
occasional cold or sore throat from wet feet was eating little
through being unable to accustom herself to the fare that was
the best the Brashears could now afford--cheap food in cheap
lard, coarse and poisonous sugar, vilely adulterated coffee,
doctored meat and vegetables--the food which the poor in their
ignorance buy--and for which they in their helplessness pay
actually higher prices than do intelligent well-to-do people for
the better qualities. And not only were the times hard, but the
winter also. Snow--sleet--rain--thaw--slush--noisome,
disease-laden vapor--and, of course, sickness everywhere--with
occasional relief in death, relief for the one who died, relief
for the li