She had not been to a picture show in three years; had never been in an automobile, nor to the derby, nor the State Fair, but each Sunday morning walked in to the Cathedral to early mass.
She was always at home, except when she made the trip to the grocery, or to The Puritan to deliver the wash, or to the knitting unit to exchange the pair of well-knitted socks (on the tops of which she always made a narrow border of red, white and blue) for more yarn.
She gave the boys twenty cents each every Saturday night to go to the picture show and for peanuts. They knew all the knot-holes in the ball park fence and all the home players by name and sight. They argued and sometimes fought over the umpire's decision.
The Government selected and named a training camp site, out the Preston Street car line, Camp Taylor. It was soon rumored around Limerick how they were burning down practically new buildings to make immediate room for barracks and were paying unheard-of prices for labor. Every one who owned a saw, hammer and square and who could hit the hammer with the nail, called himself a carpenter and journeyed thither. The paper boys became water boys at three dollars per day. So Tim gave up his paper stand and became a water boy.
Mrs. O'Flannagan, going down to the store for a pair of shoes and taking three dollars to pay for them, the price she had been paying for the same shoe for ten years, was forced to return home for three dollars more, as she was told: "Last week the price was raised to $5.98." Everywhere she went to buy some simple necessity she was told of a sudden similar raise.
The husbands and sweethearts of the few remaining colored washladies having procured jobs at the camp and the women themselves receiving liberal offers at other occupations, deserted the washtub. The ladies of The Puritan were forced to get Mrs. O'Flannagan or buy an electric washer and iron or surreptitiously do the family wash in the bathtub and dry it in the kitchenette.
Three or four times daily a limousine or sedan drove up in front of Mrs. O'Flannagan's and a daintily bedecked creature in a fifty-dollar hat and a two-hundred-dollar dress, wearing twenty-dollar shoes, stepped out exhibiting a none too slender calf encased in a five-dollar stocking, though her father might have gotten his start as a section-hand at two dollars per day on the L. & N. or have driven a huckster's wagon, or tended bar, or curried horses. She tripped into the house and, after shaking hands with the washlady (she was hard pushed), who was forced to quit work, wipe her hands on the roller towel and entertain her visitor, said:
"Oh, Mrs. O'Flannagan, Mrs. Rothchilds says you are a beautiful laundress and that you always return all the things when you promise. I had a nigger doing my work and she was an awful nuisance. I do believe she wore my stockings and my teddy-bears. Mrs. Rothchilds is a friend of mine; we live in adjoining apartments. There are four in her family and only three in mine and her son Leo has so many shirts. She tells me you have been her laundress for three years and that she pays you a dollar and a half a week. Now that's too cheap. You give up her washing and take mine. I will pay you three dollars a week and send it round in the car by Charles."
"I have been doing Mrs. Rothchilds' wash for more than three years. When prices went up so much she offered to pay me more, saying high prices had cut the heart out of the dollar. I said: 'No, you furnish the soap and starch and what you pay is enough. I want to do what I can to help these times, and the way to put the heart back in the dollar is to put prices down; we can all help do that. All I want is to make an honest living and bring up my three boys to be good men.' I sometimes think happiness consists in having few wants. I am glad to see you are doing so well. I believe I know you. You are Rachael Reubenstein, the daughter of Herman Reubenstein, who used to have the old-clothes store at Ninth and Market. You and I used to play dolls together. Father went on your father's bond when he bought all those clothes and jewelry from two coons for twenty dollars."
"Charles, start the car; let us leave this low neighborhood, and wash the car when you get back to the garage."