“Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t think of going there. That house has been raided by the police three times within the past month.”
When at last she found a rooming-house on her list not marked “filled” she gave me the address. Within half an hour I had taken and paid for exactly what Alice and I had set our hearts on—two small clean rooms on the top floor in the back of an old-fashioned house in a convenient and decent neighborhood.
“Of course we shall have to keep our living expenses within what you are now paying,” I told Alice that evening, when she stopped in on her way from work. “Two dollars and a half each a week for rent and one dollar and a half each for our household budget. It would have been nicer if you could have moved to-night.”
“I’d have come quick enough,” Alice retorted. “You told me not to dare to come before Tuesday.”
“Certainly. You have paid until Tuesday noon. You cannot afford to give that home the price of five meals and three nights’ room-rent. We are out to learn the value of money, not how to spend it.”
“I don’t believe we’ll get very much to spend,” Alice replied despondently. “Everything in New York seems very expensive. Maybe the food they give us at the Home is as good as——”
“Stop it! If you knew the price of foodstuffs in the push-cart markets you’d know that three dollars a week will give two women all they can eat—provided they do their own cooking and use common sense in buying.”
“Will you do the buying for the first week?” Alice demanded.
“No indeed. No weekly shifts for me—either as a buyer or as a cook. A month is the shortest period one should attempt when economy is to be considered. I have thought it all out. The one who does the buying cooks dinner and washes up the breakfast dishes. The other washes the dinner dishes and cooks breakfast. How does that suit you?”
“I’m willing to do the work,” Alice assured me. “But I believe we’ll starve to death if we don’t put in more than a dollar and a half a week for food.”