The Financiers
an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, eight and a half hours a day—forty-two hours and a half. At sevenpence an hour that came to one pound four and ninepence halfpenny.
'You know I only started on Monday,' he said, 'so there's no back day to come. To-morrow goes into next week.'
'Yes, I know,' replied Ruth.
'If we pay the two weeks' rent, that'll leave us twelve shillings to live on.'
'But we won't be able to keep all that,' said Ruth, 'because there's other things to pay.'
'What other things?'
'We owe the baker eight shillings for the bread he let us have while you were not working, and there's about twelve shillings owing for groceries. We'll have to pay them something on account. Then we want some more coal; there's only about a shovelful left, and'
'Wait a minit,' said Easton. 'The best way is to write out a list of everything we owe; then we shall know exactly where we are. You get me a piece of paper and tell me what to write. Then we'll see what it all comes to.'
'Do you mean everything we owe, or everything we must pay to-morrow.'
'I think we'd better make a list of all we owe, first.'
While they were talking the baby was sleeping restlessly, occasionally uttering plaintive little cries. The mother now went and knelt at the side of the cradle, which she gently rocked with one hand, patting the infant with the other.
'Except the furniture people, the biggest thing we owe is the rent,' she said when Easton was ready to begin.
'It seems to me,' said he, as—after having cleared a space on the table, and arranged the paper—he began to sharpen his pencil with a table-knife, 'that you don't manage things as well as you might. If you was to make out a list of just the things you must have before you went out of a Saturday, you'd find the money would go much farther. Instead of doing that you just take the money in your hand, without knowing exactly what you're going to do with it, and when you come back it's all gone and next to nothing to show for it.'
His wife made no reply: her head was bent down over the child.
'Now, let's see,' went on her husband. 'First of all there's the rent. How much did you say we owe?'
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