Then my uncle, in an apologetic tone, broke in, “There, Al, lad, we only stopped in one place; sort of celebration, lad, after being separated so long. Don’t say anything about it, lad. I’ll give you five cents more.” But Aunt Millie flew into a terrible rage. “Don’t apologize, Stanwood. Give him a clout i’ the head, and let him be careful what he says. Drinkin’, eh? I show him,” and she suddenly swung her fist against my ear, and sent me stumbling to the floor. At that, Uncle Stanwood rushed at her, although he was lurching, and grasping her wrist, called, “There, Millie, that’s enough.” That brought on an altercation, in the midst of which the landlady came up, and said, “Stop that noise, or I’ll call the police. I’ll give you another day for to get out of this. I keep a respectable house, mind you, and I won’t, I simply won’t have drinking taking place here. The boarders won’t stand for it!”
“Oh, you insultin’ vixin, you!” screamed aunt, brandishing her arms in the air with savage fury, “Don’t you go to sittin’ on the seat of virtue like that! Didn’t I see the beer man call in your kitchen this morning? You hypocrite, you!”
“Oh,” screamed the landlady, leaving the room, “let me hear one more sound and in comes the police. I won’t stand it!”
“There,” cried Aunt Millie, consoled by the landlady’s departure, “I knew that would bring her. Now, Stanwood, let’s finish that little bottle before bedtime. This is our first day in America.” Uncle Stanwood pulled from his pocket a flask of whisky, and I left them sitting on the edge of the bed drinking from it.
The next morning Uncle Stanwood went to the mill where he was working, and told the overseer that he must have another day off in which to get a tenement and get settled. Then he and aunt found a tidy house just outside the blocks of duck-houses, and, after renting it, went to the shopping center, where they chose a complete housekeeping outfit and made the terms of payment,—“One Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week.” That plunged us into debt right off, and I later learned that even our steamship tickets had been purchased from an agency on somewhat the same terms. The landlady had told Aunt Millie that my uncle had been a steady drinker since his stay with her, shortly after his arrival in the United States.
“That accounts for his having so little money, then,” commented my aunt. “I fail to see where he’s making a much better man of himself than he was across the water.”
At last Aunt Millie had the satisfaction of “setting up American housekeeping,” as she termed it. But she did not find much romance in this new kind of housekeeping.
“See that homely thing,” she complained, indicating the stove, “Give me that old fireplace and the stone kitchen floor! I’ve a good mind to pack my tin box and take the next boat,” she half cried, throughout those first days of Americanization. “I don’t, for the life of me, see whatever brought me over here to this forsaken place!”
I had to share in the blunders that were made. I was heartily laughed at by the produce pedler when I asked him for “two pounds of potatoes.” The yeast-cake man looked at me blankly when I asked for “a penny’s worth of barm.” Aunt Millie did not see how she was ever going to make a family baking from a piece of yeast an inch square, when she had been wont to put in the same amount of flour a handful of brewer’s barm. On Sunday morning the baker’s cart came with hot pots of beans crested with burnt lumps of pork. We had to learn to eat beans and brown bread.
“I’m sure,” said my aunt when I brought home a five-cent loaf, “that they rise the dough with potatoes; its so light and like dried chips!” For the first time in my life I was surfeited with pastry. I bought several square inches of frosted cake from the baker for five cents, and ate it in place of the substantial food I had lived on in England. In place of making meals, when she wanted to visit with the neighbors, my aunt would give me five cents to spend on anything I liked.