Tom Outland's Story
wear. They decided that for such an occasion she
must have a new dress. Bixby borrowed twenty-five dollars from me, and took his lunch hour to go
shopping with his wife and choose the satin. That
seemed to me very strange. In New Mexico the
Indian boys sometimes went to a trader’s with their
wives and bought shawls or calico, and we thought
it rather contemptible. On the night of the reception the Bixbys set off gaily in a cab; the dress
they considered a great success. But they had bad
luck. Somebody spilt claret-cup on Mrs. Bixby’s
skirt before the evening was half over, and when
they got home that night I heard her weeping and
reproaching him for having been so upset about it,
and looking at nothing but her ruined dress all evening. She said he cried out when it happened. I
don’t doubt it.
Every cab, every party, was more than they could afford. If he lost an umbrella, it was a real misfortune. He wasn’t lazy, he wasn’t a fool, and he meant to be honest; but he was intimidated by that miserable sort of departmental life. He didn’t know anything else. He thought working in a store or a bank not respectable. Living with the Bixbys gave me a kind of low-spiritedness I had never known before. During my days of waiting for appointments, I used to walk for hours around the fence that shuts in the White House grounds, and watch the Washington monument colour with
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