"Would you?" I asked.
"I'd go to the ends of the earth with you, Billy," she answered quietly.
How plucky she was! I couldn't help but smile as I answered, more to myself:
"We haven't even the carfare to go to the ends of the earth, Ruth. It will take all we have to pay our bills."
"All we have?" she asked.
No, not that. They could get only a little of what she and I had. They could take our belongings, that's all. And they hadn't got those yet.
But I had begun to hate those neighbors with a fierce, unreasoning hatred. In silence they dictated, without assisting. For a dozen years I had lived with them, played with them, been an integral part of their lives, and now they were worse than useless to me. There wasn't one of them big enough to receive me into his home for myself alone, apart from the work I did. There wasn't a true brother among them.
Our lives turn upon little things. They turn swiftly. Within fifteen minutes I had solved my problem in a fashion as unexpected as it was radical.