He stopped in amazement: no chair had been left in the kitchen, but Fanny gave a despairing glance around her, in search of one, then sank abruptly, and sat flat upon the floor.
“You’re going to leave me in the lurch!” she gasped.
“What on earth—” George sprang to her. “Get up, Aunt Fanny!”
“I can’t. I’m too weak. Let me alone, George!” And as he released the wrist he had seized to help her, she repeated the dismal prophecy which for days she had been matching against her hopes: “You’re going to leave me—in the lurch!”
“Why no, Aunt Fanny!” he protested. “At first I’d have been something of a burden on you. I’m to get eight dollars a week; about thirty-two a month. The rent’s thirty-six dollars a month, and the table-d’hote dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half of the rent—eighteen dollars—I’d have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you’d not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you’d be paying more of the expenses than I would.”
She stared at him with such a forlorn blankness as he had never seen. “I’d be paying—” she said feebly. “I’d be paying—”
“Certainly you would. You’d be using more of your money than—”
“My money!” Fanny’s chin drooped upon her thin chest, and she laughed miserably. “I’ve got twenty-eight dollars. That’s all.”
“You mean until the interest is due again?”
“I mean that’s all,” Fanny said. “I mean that’s all there is. There won’t be any more interest because there isn’t any principal.”