I became so valuable a helper during the noon hour that my uncle persuaded my aunt to put in some dinner for me, also, so that I could eat it with him. He did this simply because he wanted me to have some reward for my work besides the fifteen cents a week he gave me. So I used to sit with him, and he would divide a meat-pie with me, let me drink some coffee from the top of the dinner pail, and share a piece of pudding. There was always a bright gleam in his eyes as he watched me eat, a gleam that said as plainly as words, “It’s good to see you have a good time, Al, lad!”
By the end of the summer I was so familiar with the mill that I wanted to spend my whole time in it. I had watched the mill-boys, some of them not much older than myself—and I was only eleven—and I wanted to swagger up and down the alleys like them. They were lightly clad in undershirt and overalls, so that in their bared feet they could run without slipping on the hot floor. They were working for wages, too, and took home a pay envelope every Saturday. Just think of going home every Saturday, and throwing an envelope on the table with three dollars in it, and saying, nonchalantly, “Aunt, there’s my wages. Just fork over my thirty cents spending money. I’m going to see the matinee this afternoon at the theater. It’s ‘Michael Strogroff,’ and they say there’s a real fight in the second act and eight changes of scenery, for ten cents. They’ve got specialties between the acts, too!”
Other temporal considerations entered into this desire to go into the mill. I wanted to have a dinner pail of my own, with a whole meat-pie in it, or a half-pound of round steak with its gravy dripping over a middle of mashed potatoes with milk and butter in them! Then there were apple dumplings to consider, and freedom from coal picking and the dirty life on the dumps. All in all, I knew it would be an excellent exchange, if possible. I spoke to my uncle about it one noon-hour.
“Why can’t I work in the mill, too?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you rather get some learning, Al?” he asked. “You know men can’t do much in the world without learning. It’s brains, not hands, that makes the world really go ahead. I wish you could get a lot of schooling and perhaps go to college. It’s what I always wanted and never got, and see where I am to-day. I’m a failure, Al, that’s what I am!”
“But aunt says that I’ve got to go in the mill as soon as I can, uncle.”
His face grew sad at that, and he said, “Yes, through our drinking and getting in debt! That’s what it’s all leading to! It’s a pity, a sad pity!” and he grew so gloomy that I spoke no more about the matter that day.
It was one of the paradoxes of my home, that being heavily in debt for our steamship tickets and household furnishings, and both giving a large amount of patronage to the saloons, my aunt and uncle involved themselves more inextricably in debt by buying clothes and ornaments on the “Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week” plan. There was no economy, no recession of tastes, no limit of desire to save us. Every penny that I secured was spent as soon as earned. I learned this from my foster parents. Uncle had his chalk-mark at the saloon, and aunt received regular thrice-a-week visits from the beer pedler. On gala days, when there was a cheap excursion down the bay, aunt could make a splendid appearance on the street in a princess dress, gold bracelets, a pair of earrings, and gloves (Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week plan). When Mrs. Terence O’Boyle, and Mrs. Hannigan, daughter to Mrs. O’Boyle, and Mrs. Redden, the loom fixer’s wife with her little baby, came to our house, after the breakfast had been cleared away, and the men were hard at work, Aunt Millie would exclaim, “Now, friends, the beer man’s just brought a dozen lagers and a bottle of port wine. Sit right up, and make a merry morning of it. You must be tired, Mrs. Hannigan. Won’t your babby take a little sup of port for warming his stomach?” Of course, Mrs. O’Boyle returned these parties, as did her daughter and Mrs. Redden.
My uncle dared not say too much about the visits of the beer-wagon, because he had his own score at the saloon, and his appetite for drink was transcendant. Aunt had little ways of her own for pacifying him in the matter. She would save a half dozen bottles till night, and then, when he came home, she would say, “Now, Stanwood, after tea, let’s be comfortable. I’ve six bottles in for you, and we’ll take our comfort grand!”
By Friday morning the financial fret began. My aunt, as financier of the house, had the disposal of her husband’s fifteen dollars in charge. In the disposal of this amount, she indulged in a weird, incomprehensible arithmetical calculation, certainly original if not unique. In place of numerals and dollar signs, she dotted a paper with pencil points, and did some mysterious but logical ruminating in her head. Her reasoning always followed this line, however: