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One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty
cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing
the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with
the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times
Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be
Christmas.
There was clearly
nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della
did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs,
sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of
the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look
at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per
week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on
the look-out for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter
would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze
during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked
blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and
unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his
flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James
Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
