“I’d be forever doing the work,” she had said in justifying this extravagance to Martin, “and we want to get settled some time!”
“Sure,--have ’em made,” he had agreed genially.
The dining-room had puzzled Jeannette for a long time, but after the dark blue carpet had been selected and made into a rug to fit the room, she had found a blue madras that just matched its tone. It cost a great deal more than she felt she ought to pay, but she had bought the twelve yards she needed, nevertheless, and had determined she could save something by cutting and hemming the curtains herself; she could take them out to Alice’s and use her sewing-machine.
It was all finished now, Jeannette reflected, pushing the big brass bed into place against the wall. They had been a little reckless perhaps, but now they were ready to settle down, begin to live quietly and to save. They owed about two hundred dollars at Wanamaker’s but would soon manage to pay that off.
She went on calculating expenses as she ran the carpet sweeper about the room. Martin liked a good deal of meat, so she doubted if she could manage the table on less than twelve or maybe, thirteen dollars a week; that would take half of what he gave her on Saturdays. She needed so much for this, so much for that, and she would have to get herself some kind of a silk dress for the hot weather; still she thought she could save five or six dollars a week and Martin ought to be able to do the same; they would have the Wanamaker bill paid in a few months. As she went on running the sweeper under the bed and pushing it gingerly into corners so as not to mar the paint of the baseboards, she reflected that, as a matter of fact, Martin had really no right to expect her to pay anything out of her weekly money on what they owed Wanamaker; every cent of that bill had been for house furnishing, and it had been clearly understood between them that her money was for the table and herself. Still it had been she who had wanted the curtains; she ought to help pay for them.
When the bathroom was cleaned, Martin’s bath towel spread along the rim of the tub to dry, his dirty shirt and collar put into the laundry basket, his shoes set neatly on the floor of the closet, the ash receiver in the living-room emptied and the cushions on the davenport straightened, Jeannette settled herself in a rocking-chair at the window, her basket of sewing in her lap. She hated sewing; the basket was in tangled confusion, but it was always that way. Spools and yarn, papers of needles, pins, buttons, threads, tape, and scraps of material were all mixed up together in a fine snarl. She found a certain degree of satisfaction in its confusion. To-day she had a run in one of her silk stockings to draw together, and a button to sew on Martin’s coat.