That night as we felt our way in the dark through the unlighted halls to our rooms, Lolly, swearing audibly and picturesquely, said she was "darned tired" of this "old pious prison," and as she now had all the "dope" she wanted upon the place, she was going to get out, and she asked me to go with her. I said that I would.
XVI
I worked for five weeks in the stock-yards before I could make up the deficit in my hundred dollars caused by those first three weeks of idleness and the consequent expenses of my board. I am very bad at figures. I still calculate with my fingers. Every night, however, I counted my little hoard, and I had it all reckoned up on paper how soon I would have that hundred intact again.
Out of my fifteen a week I had to allow five dollars for my board, and so much for luncheon, car-fare, and the little articles I added to my wardrobe. I used about eight dollars a week on myself and I sent home two. That left me only five a week, and as I had used twenty-five of the hundred before I got my position, it took me over five weeks to make it up. As each week my little pile grew larger, the more excited I became in anticipation of that moment when I could write!
I would lie awake composing the wonderful letter that would accompany that hundred dollars, but when the sixth Saturday (pay-day) actually came, and I had at last the money, I found myself unable to pen the glowing letter of my dreams. This was the letter I finally sent, and unless he read between the lines, goodness knows it was a model of businesslike brevity, showing the undoubted influence of the Smith & Co. approved type of correspondence:
Y. W. C. A.
Chicago, Ill., Aug. 8-19.
Roger Avery Hamilton, Esq.
Dear Sir:
I send you herewith inclosed the sum of one hundred dollars, being in full the amount recently lent by you to,
Very faithfully yours,
Nora Ascough.
It was with a bursting heart that I folded that cold and brief epistle. Then I laid it on top of that eloquent pile of bills—"dirty money." Just before I did up the package, the ache within me grew so intense that I wrote on the envelop:
"Please come to see me now."