"Don't you read the newspapers?" says I.
"Oh, I suppose I had glanced at the headlines," says Hartley. "And of course I knew that restaurant prices had gone up, and laundry charges, and cigarettes and so. But I hadn't shopped for ladies' silk hose, or for shoes, or—er—robes de nuit, or that sort of thing. And I hadn't tried to hire a three-room furnished apartment. Honest, it's something awful."
"Yes, I've heard something like that for quite a spell now," says I. "Found that your little hundred and fifty a month wouldn't go very far, did you?"
"Far!" says Hartley. "Why, it was like taking a one-gallon freezer of ice cream to a Sunday school picnic. Really, it seemed as if there were a thousand hands reaching out for my pay envelope the moment I got it. I don't understand how young married couples get along at all."
"If you did," says I, "you'd have a steady job explainin' the miracle to about 'steen different Congressional committees. How about Edith? Is she a help—or otherwise?"
"She's a good sport, Edith is," says Hartley. "She keeps me bucked up a lot. It was her decision that I just passed on to Mr. Piddie. We talked it all out last night; how impossible it was to live on my present salary, and what I should say if it wasn't raised. That is, all but the crude way I put it, and the pin-head part. We agreed, though, that I had to make a break, and that it might as well be now as later on."
"Well, you've made it," says I. "What now?"
"We've got to think that out," says Hartley.
"The best of luck to you," says I, as he starts toward the elevator.
And with that Hartley drops out. You know how it is here in New York. If you don't come in on the same train with people you know, or they work in different buildin's, or patronize some other lunch room, the chances of your seein' 'em more 'n once in six months are about as good as though they'd moved to St. Louis or Santa Fe.