The Dust [58]
replied she. "I'd rather father and I kept on as we are."
"But that's impossible. You've no right to live in this small, cramping way. You must broaden out and give HIM room to grow. . . . Isn't that sensible? "
"It sounds so," she admitted. "But--" She gazed round helplessly--"I'm afraid!"
"Afraid of what?"
"I don't know."
"Then don't bother about it."
"I'll have to be very--careful," she said thoughtfully.
"As you please," replied he. "Only, don't live and think on a ten-dollar-a-week basis. That isn't the way to get on."
He never again brought up the matter in direct form. But most of his conversation was indirect and more or less subtle suggestions as to ways of branching out. She moved cautiously for a few days, then timidly began to spend money.
There is a notion widely spread abroad that people who have little money know more about the art of spending money and the science of economizing than those who have much. It would be about as sensible to say that the best swimmers are those who have never been near the water, or no nearer than a bath tub. Anyone wishing to be convinced need only make an excursion into the poor tenement district and observe the garbage barrels overflowing with spoiled food--or the trashy goods exposed for sale in the shops and the markets. Those who have had money and have lost it are probably, as a rule, the wisest in thrift. Those who have never had money are almost invariably prodigal-- because they are ignorant. When Dorothea Hallowell was a baby the family had had money. But never since she could remember had they been anything but poor.
She did not know how to spend money. She did not know prices or values--being in that respect precisely like the mass of mankind--and womankind--who imagine they are economical because they hunt so-called bargains and haggle with merchants who have got doubly ready for them by laying in inferior goods and by putting up prices in advance. She knew how much ten dollars a week was, the meaning of the twenty to thirty dollars a week her father had made. But she had only a faint--and exaggeratedly mistaken--notion about sixty-five hundred a year--six and a half thousands. It seemed wealth to her, so vast that a hundred thousand a year would have seemed no more. As soon as she drifted away from the known course--the thirty to forty dollars a week upon which they had been living --Dorothea Hallowell was in a trackless sea, with a broken compass and no chart whatever. A common enough experience in America, the land of sudden changes of fortune, of rosiest hopes about "striking it rich," of carelessness and ignorance as to values, of eager and untrained appetite for luxury and novelty of any and every kind.
At first any expenditure, however small, for the plainest comfort which had been beyond their means seemed a giddy extravagance. But a bank account--AND a check book--soon dissipated that nervousness. A few charge accounts, a little practice in the simple easy gesture of drawing a check, and she was almost at her ease. With people who have known only squalor or with those who have earned their better fortune by privation and slow accumulation, the spreading out process is usually slow--not so slow as it used to be when our merchants had not learned the art of tempting any and every kind of human nature, but still far from rapid. A piece of money reminds them vividly and painfully of the toil put into acquiring it; and they shy away from the pitfall of the facile check. With those born and bred as Dorothy was and elevated into what seems to them affluence by no effort of their own, the spreading is a tropical, overnight affair.
Counting all she spent and arranged to spend in those first few weeks, you had no great total. But it was great for a girl who had been making ten dollars a week. Also there were sown in her mind broadcast and thick the seeds of desire for more luxurious comfort, of need for it, that could never be uprooted.
Norman came over almost every evening. He got a new and youthful
"But that's impossible. You've no right to live in this small, cramping way. You must broaden out and give HIM room to grow. . . . Isn't that sensible? "
"It sounds so," she admitted. "But--" She gazed round helplessly--"I'm afraid!"
"Afraid of what?"
"I don't know."
"Then don't bother about it."
"I'll have to be very--careful," she said thoughtfully.
"As you please," replied he. "Only, don't live and think on a ten-dollar-a-week basis. That isn't the way to get on."
He never again brought up the matter in direct form. But most of his conversation was indirect and more or less subtle suggestions as to ways of branching out. She moved cautiously for a few days, then timidly began to spend money.
There is a notion widely spread abroad that people who have little money know more about the art of spending money and the science of economizing than those who have much. It would be about as sensible to say that the best swimmers are those who have never been near the water, or no nearer than a bath tub. Anyone wishing to be convinced need only make an excursion into the poor tenement district and observe the garbage barrels overflowing with spoiled food--or the trashy goods exposed for sale in the shops and the markets. Those who have had money and have lost it are probably, as a rule, the wisest in thrift. Those who have never had money are almost invariably prodigal-- because they are ignorant. When Dorothea Hallowell was a baby the family had had money. But never since she could remember had they been anything but poor.
She did not know how to spend money. She did not know prices or values--being in that respect precisely like the mass of mankind--and womankind--who imagine they are economical because they hunt so-called bargains and haggle with merchants who have got doubly ready for them by laying in inferior goods and by putting up prices in advance. She knew how much ten dollars a week was, the meaning of the twenty to thirty dollars a week her father had made. But she had only a faint--and exaggeratedly mistaken--notion about sixty-five hundred a year--six and a half thousands. It seemed wealth to her, so vast that a hundred thousand a year would have seemed no more. As soon as she drifted away from the known course--the thirty to forty dollars a week upon which they had been living --Dorothea Hallowell was in a trackless sea, with a broken compass and no chart whatever. A common enough experience in America, the land of sudden changes of fortune, of rosiest hopes about "striking it rich," of carelessness and ignorance as to values, of eager and untrained appetite for luxury and novelty of any and every kind.
At first any expenditure, however small, for the plainest comfort which had been beyond their means seemed a giddy extravagance. But a bank account--AND a check book--soon dissipated that nervousness. A few charge accounts, a little practice in the simple easy gesture of drawing a check, and she was almost at her ease. With people who have known only squalor or with those who have earned their better fortune by privation and slow accumulation, the spreading out process is usually slow--not so slow as it used to be when our merchants had not learned the art of tempting any and every kind of human nature, but still far from rapid. A piece of money reminds them vividly and painfully of the toil put into acquiring it; and they shy away from the pitfall of the facile check. With those born and bred as Dorothy was and elevated into what seems to them affluence by no effort of their own, the spreading is a tropical, overnight affair.
Counting all she spent and arranged to spend in those first few weeks, you had no great total. But it was great for a girl who had been making ten dollars a week. Also there were sown in her mind broadcast and thick the seeds of desire for more luxurious comfort, of need for it, that could never be uprooted.
Norman came over almost every evening. He got a new and youthful