But Teddy had no few dollars put away. When the fund for the new suit could be counted otherwise than in pennies, some special need had always swept it into the family treasury. Teddy had let it go without a sigh. He would have let it go without a sigh to-day, only that he had nothing saved. Being naturally of a loving, care-taking disposition, it meant more to him that Gussie or Gladys should have a new pair of shoes than that he should be able to emulate Fred Inglis in ordering a suit at Love's.
Having left the kitchen, he did not go farther than the living room, where, Gussie having taken herself upstairs, Gladys was drying her eyes. He merely walked to the end of the room, his hands in his pockets, as he stared above one of the hydrangea trees into Indiana Avenue. The windows being open, the voices of playing children mingled with the even-song of birds. To Teddy, there was mockery in these cheerful sounds. There was mockery in the westering May sunshine, mockery in the groups of girls, bareheaded and arm in arm, as they strolled toward Palisade Walk; mockery in the ruddy-faced men who watered their shrubs and grass; mockery in the aproned women who came to windows or doors in the intervals of preparing supper. It all spoke of a homey comfort and content, with no bluff behind it. In the Follett house all was bluff--and misery.
Somehow, for reasons he couldn't fathom, the cutting off of the gas from the range seemed the last humiliation. In the matter of food, if one thing was too dear, you could eat another. So it was in the whole round of essentials in living. You could get a substitute or you could go without. But for heat there was no substitute, and you couldn't go without it. It ranked with clothes and shelter as a necessity even among savages. And yet here they were, a civilized family, living in a civilized house, in a suburb of New York, deprived of what even Micmacs could have at will. It was one of the happenings that could never have been foreseen as possibilities.
His hands being in his pockets, Teddy fingered the twenty-dollar bill. He did this unconsciously, merely because it was there. It did occur to him to wish it was his own; but his wishes went no farther.