"Life's a funny proposition after all;
Just why we're here and what it's all about,
It's a problem that has driven many brainy men to drink,
It's a problem that they've never figured out."
Life seemed simple enough to Helen. She would be a telegraph-operator soon, earning as much as fifty dollars a month. She could repay the hundred dollars then, buy some new clothes, and have plenty to eat. She would try to get a job at the Ripley station,—always in the back of her mind was the thought of Paul,—and she planned the furnishing of housekeeping rooms, and thought of making curtains and embroidering centerpieces.
It was spring when he wrote that he was coming to spend a day in Sacramento. He was going to Masonville to help his mother move to Ripley. On the way he would stop and see Helen.
Helen, in happy excitement, thought of her clothes. She must have something new to wear when they met. Paul must see in the first glance how much she had changed, how much she had improved. She had not been able to save anything, but she must, she must have new clothes. Two days of worried planning brought her courage to the point of approaching Mr. Roberts and asking him for her next month's salary in advance. Next month's food was a problem she could meet later. Mr. Roberts was very kind about it.
"Money? Of course!" he said. He took a bill from his own pocket-book. "We'll have to see about your getting more pretty soon." Her heart leaped. He put the bill in her palm, closing his hand around hers. "Going to be good to me if I do?"
"Oh, I'd do anything in the world I could for you," she said, looking at him gratefully. "You're so good! Thank you ever so much." His look struck her as odd, but a customer came in at that moment, and in taking the message she forgot about it.
She went out at noon and bought a white, pleated, voile skirt for five dollars, a China-silk waist for three-ninety-five, and a white, straw sailor. And that afternoon McCormick, with his cynical smile, handed her a note that had come over the wire for her. "Arrive eight ten Sunday morning. Meet me. Paul."