CHAPTER XXII.
DOLLARS AND CENTS.
Molly reached the end of her first month’s housekeeping, and now could see exactly where she stood, and could plan for the coming month to advantage. Referring to her note-book, she found she had spent 53 cents less the second week than the first, 75 cents less the third, and 60 cents less the fourth. She had, therefore, in hand nearly $2, and provisions in the house for a couple of days. She had also salad-oil, olives, Worcestershire sauce, cooking-wine, pepper, salt, mustard, corn meal, and vinegar, to last a month at least. There was also over a pound of coffee left; and she would need only three pounds of lard in place of five, as there was nearly half left, and two instead of four pounds of coffee. She had, therefore, that much to deduct from her second month’s grocery bill, and several additions to make to it, for she had so far done without many articles she liked to have in the house; she found, too, that the twelve pounds of sugar she had allowed must be increased to fifteen, twelve granulated, three cut loaf.
Her order for the grocer stood for the second month thus:—
Molly had carefully saved the peels of all lemons used in the past month, which had not been grated. As they were squeezed, the pulp was scraped out, and then they were dropped into a gem-jar of salt and water, a handful of salt to the quart. She meant to do the same with oranges, through the winter, and to candy them. A cup of candied lemon or orange peel is a great addition to a fruit cake or to many puddings; and, as the only cost was the sugar used in candying it, she would always keep a good supply in her store-closet. The alcohol was to make lemon flavoring; and, as soon as it came, she took a fresh lemon with a coarse rind, and with a sharp knife carefully pared off the yellow as thin as possible; this, cut into small pieces, she put into the alcohol, then corked it tightly. In two or three weeks this would be very fragrant extract of lemon, growing stronger the longer it was kept. The extract of rose, of vanilla, and of almond, she bought of the druggist; they were much stronger than those put up in bottles, and of course very much cheaper, and the ten cents’ worth would last months. The extract of rose was to take the place of rose-water in flavoring cakes or icing; a very few drops would suffice.
“Now,” thought Molly, as she surveyed her new stock of provisions, “I can have some variety in dessert and cakes, and these little bottles will work wonders in my commissariat. Charlotte and I will have a real good time when she comes.”
“Charlotte” was Mrs. Welles; and she was to come the second week in October, when the hills would be in the full glory of autumn color; and Molly was full of anticipation of pleasure in having her old friend in her own house.
“That alone pays for all the extra care and work of housekeeping,” she had said to Harry,—“the pleasure of asking your friends to your own house instead of some one else’s.”
“Oh, it’s a paying thing in every way,” said Harry. “I confess I’m completely converted.”
Harry had kept up his little jokes about their housekeeping; had laughed gently over her weekly savings, and still more when she told him it was to meet the extra expense of visitors.
“But, Harry,” she had said earnestly, “we must do that, you know, or else get just as much behind as I am now before-hand. Of course, if we were a large family keeping a bountiful house, one more or less would not need providing for; but when just two are living as well as they know how, on a certain sum, that amount will not stretch to take in extra. Every one who manages has to calculate so; only perhaps I need not have spoken of it. Many things are all right until they are spoken, and then they do, I confess, sound very small. Of course, if we cooked a large roast to-day, ate it cold two or three days, baked once a week several loaves, and had large pots of weak coffee, half to be thrown away, we should not need to provide very much for a visitor; but we aim to live differently; and it is only by making one thing fit in with another that we can live quite within our means, and be able to welcome a visitor without anxiety.”
Molly was flushed, and her eyes sparkled; for she was a little wounded.
“My dearest little woman, you mistook me; I wasn’t laughing at the planning at all; I was laughing in admiration at the way you steered your little bark so very near the wind, and trimmed so very neatly. And to think, too, how clever you were to cut down the table-expenses after the first week without my guessing it. I declare, I thought I was living quite like a prince. I am lost in admiration, Molly, and feel ashamed to be so much better off than most fellows.”
He spoke in a sort of jesting earnest, and pressed Molly to him. She understood him well; the slight cloud lifted, and, with his arm about her, they went over the month’s accounts together.
“Now do you regret the experiment of housekeeping?” she asked, when he had congratulated her.
“No, indeed, I don’t. No more boarding for me if I know it.”
“I am so thankful to hear you say that.”
“Now, my dear, you’ve had your little innings, listen to mine. I have $20 a month, remember, to give an account of. You know we set out, when we married, with the brave purpose of reserving $10 a month for emergencies. But with board and laundress coming to nearly $90, and the numberless trifling expenses, car fares, etc., in New York, in the whole twelve months we did not save $10.”
“I know, and it worried me very much; to live right up to one’s income seems terrible.”
“Not so terrible in our case, because I’m sure of a steadily increasing salary; and I propose we do not increase our expenses for some years to come.”
“Oh, no indeed! Whatever the increase, it must be saved so long as we have health.”
“Well, I find by living in the country that drain of small expenses is avoided; and I actually have $12 in hand.”
“Oh, I am so thankful, but”—anxiously—“you have not been going without lunch?”
“By no means; but I find fruit or a sandwich and glass of milk makes me as good a lunch as I want, and averages ten cents a day.”
Harry’s commutation ticket was $6 a month, $3 only of which had to come from the margin of $20. (It will be remembered that the amount they allowed for their rent, servants, and table was $77. The $3 saved from their old boarding-house expense of $80 partly paid the commutation ticket.) Harry had therefore limited his personal expenses to $5 for lunch and newspapers, tobacco, etc. Molly was very proud each time she remembered how freely he had spent money before their marriage, and how cheerfully he had resigned the cigars and expensive luxuries that were almost second nature, for her sake. How could she grudge any pains that should make his house a little like the one he had been accustomed to? They had both decided to be very economical in dress; and it is astonishing how very little will keep up a wardrobe once well supplied, provided one does not easily tire of the same garments. Altogether Molly thought the outlook was bright enough; and, after thus summing up, they spent a long, happy evening laying plans.
“Oh, what is your conclusion about our light-handed Phyllis; will you keep her?”
“Oh yes; she certainly is rather exasperating sometimes, and I have thought it over seriously whether I should take the trouble to go on with her or change; but she has some very good qualities; she is very clean, and very saving, and really about cooking very intelligent. Outside of the kitchen I can’t say much for her; but another might be stupid there, too, so I think I’ll bear the ills I know.”
Marta’s wages were but $10; but Molly had found it absolutely necessary to hire a woman for two days, that Marta might see how washing and ironing was to be accomplished in this country, which Molly herself knew little about. She knew what the result should be, but how to attain it she did not know. When the woman came, she was careful to profit, herself. She watched the process, and asked the woman a dozen questions.
“It seems to me that Marta rubs enough and works hard enough, but nothing looks just right,” she had said, as she watched the apparently easy movements of Mrs. Hall, who was considered an excellent laundress.
“Lor bless you, ma’am, it ain’t the rubbin’ with clothes like your’n, it’s the rinsin’, and the washin’ in plenty of water—many ov ’em stuff the tub just full of clothes as they can pack, and then puddle them all through in a little water one side the tub, when it’s just as easy to have a few bits in at a time. Then when they’re a bilin’, the biler’s chuck full, and no room for ’em to scald; and they’re put right out of the bilin’ suds into the blue rinse water, ’stead ov bein’ suddled first.”
“What is suddled?”
“Well, just being put into a tub ov clear or near clear water, an’ gettin’ the soap out of ’em; then they kin be tossed into the rinse.”
“You think, then, it’s not the labor, but the water?”
“Stan’s to reason, if the cloes come out of thick water,—I don’t mean dirty; your cloes wouldn’t make dirty water if you was to try,—they’ll look thick.”
This was a great thing for Molly to know. She saw the principle of it, and she knew Marta grudged no work; it was only that she did not expend it in the right direction. Less rubbing, but more water, then, was no doubt the secret.
With ironing she learned less, Mrs. Hall’s views on the matter being of the Bunsby kind. Molly had been reading all she could find in books about it, but she believed a few words from a practical laundress would enlighten her more than much reading. She had only one clear idea herself; and that was that the most beautiful laundry-work she had ever seen, she had been told, was due to long boiling of the starch.
“I boil it till it runs off the spoon like melted silver,” the woman who did it told her.
“What do you think about starch? Ought it to be long boiled?” she asked Mrs. Hall.
“Oh, I don’t know. Some says so, some says not, but I never makes no differ; if I’m not ready the starch biles, if I am, it don’t. It’s all in the ironin’, I say; if you kin iron, you kin.”
“But surely sometimes starch sticks.”
“Yes, if you don’t understand it.”
Molly gave up; but she found Marta so far improved by what she had seen, that the money was well expended.
But to return to the dollar and cent question. Her grocery bill for the coming month was $10.02 against $11.22 for the last (see Chapter IX.), and the weekly proportion of that would be $2.50½. Of several articles, such as flour and potatoes, she had renewed the supply; not because they were really exhausted, but would be in a few days; all of which small “lap-overs,” however, would make a little difference to one who watched her expenses so closely as Molly.