The outgo of money was as regular as the income—so much for the contribution-basket on Sundays; so much for the butcher; so much for the grocer; so much for the coal-oil lamps. The baker got none of their money and the druggist little.
A few dollars went now and then to the dry-goods store for dress goods, which Pheeny made up; and Eddie left an occasional sum at the Pantatorium for a fresh alpaca coat, or for a new pair of trousers when the seat of the old ones grew too refulgent or perilously extenuate. As Eddie stood up at his tall desk most of the time, however, it was rather his shoes than his pantaloons that felt the wear and tear of attrition.
And yet, in spite of all the tender miserhood of Ellaphine and the asceticism of Eddie, few of the forty-five dollars survived the thirty days' demands. Still, there was always something for the savings-bank, and the blessing on its increment was that it grew by exactions from themselves—not from their neighbors.
The inspiration of the fund was the children that were to be. The fund had ample time for accretion, since the children were as late as Never is.
Such things are not discussed, of course, in Carthage. And nobody knew how fiercely they yearned. Nobody knew of the high hopes that flared and faded.
After the first few months of marriage Eddie had begun to call Pheeny "Mother"—just for fun, you know. And it teased her so that he kept it up, for he liked a joke as well as the next fellow. Before people, of course, she was "Pheeny," and, on very grand occasions, "the wife." "Mrs. Pouch" was beyond him. But once, at a sociable, he called across the room, "Say, mother!"
He was going to ask her whether she wanted him to bring her a piece of the "chalklut" cake or a hunk of the "cokernut," but he got no farther. Nobody noticed it; but Eddie and Pheeny were consumed with shame and slunk home scarlet. Nobody noticed that they had gone.
Time went on and on, and the fund grew and grew—a little coral reef of pennies and nickels and dimes. The amusements of the couple were petty—an occasional church sociable was society; a revival period was drama. They never went to the shows that came to the Carthage Opera House. They did not miss much.
Eddie wasted no time on reading any fiction except that in the news columns of the evening paper, which a boy threw on the porch in a twisted boomerang every afternoon, and which Eddie untwisted and read after he had wiped the dishes that Pheeny washed.
Ellaphine spent no money on such vanities as novels or short stories, but she read the edifying romances in the Sunday-school paper and an occasional book from the Sunday-school library, mainly about children whose angelic qualities gave her a picture of child life that would have contrasted strongly with what their children would have been if they had had any.