Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper Part 37

"You know we have lost six hundred dollars already, and that is a great deal of money."

"True, Mary; but we must be more careful in future. We will soon make that up, I am sure."

"I hope so," Mary responded, with a sigh. She did not herself feel so sanguine of making it up. Still, she had not entered into any calculation of income and expense, leaving that to her mother, and supposing that all was right as a matter of course.

As they continued to set an excellent table, they kept up pretty regularly their complement of boarders. The end of the second year would have shown this result, if a calculation had been made: cash income, $1306--loss by boarders, $150--whole expenses, $2000.

Consequently, they were worse off at the end of the year by $694; or in the two years, $2188, by keeping boarders.

And now poor Mrs. Turner was startled on receiving her bank book from the bank, settled up, to find that her four thousand dollars had dwindled down to $1812. She could not at first believe her senses. But there were all her checks regularly entered; and, to dash even the hope that there was a mistake, there were the cancelled checks, also, bearing her own signature.

"Mary, what _shall_ we do?" was her despairing question, as the full truth became distinct to her mind.

"You say we have sunk more than two thousand dollars in two years?"

"Yes, my child."

"And have had all our hard labor for nothing?" Mary continued, and her voice trembled as she thought of how much she had gone through in that time.

"Yes."

"Something must be wrong, mother. Let us do what we should have done at first, make a careful estimate of our expenses."

"Well."

"It costs us just ten dollars each week for marketing--and I know that our groceries are at least that, including flour; that you see makes twenty dollars, and we only get twenty-eight dollars for our eight boarders. Our rent will bring our expenses up to that. And then there are servants' wages, fuel, our own clothes, and the boys'

schooling, besides what we lose every year, and the hundred little expenses which cannot be enumerated."

"Bless me, Mary! No wonder we have gone behindhand."

"Indeed, mother, it is not."

"We have acted very blindly, Mary."

"Yes, we have; but we must do so no longer. Let us give up our boarders, and move into a smaller house."

"But what shall we do Mary? Our money will soon dwindle away."

"We must do something for a living, mother, that is true. But if we cannot now see what we shall do, that is no reason why we should go on as we are. Our rent, you know, takes away from us eight dollars a week. We can get a house large enough for our own purposes at three dollars a week, or one hundred and fifty dollars a year, I am sure, thus saving five dollars a week there, and that money would buy all the plain food our whole family would eat."

"But it will never do, Mary, for us to go to moving into a little bit of a pigeon-box of a house."

"Mother, if we don't get into a cheaper house and husband our resources, we shall soon have no house to live in!" said Mary, with unwonted energy.

"Well, child, perhaps you are right; but I can't bear the thought of it," Mrs. Turner replied. "And any how, I can't see what we are going to do then."

"We ought to do what we see to be right, mother, had we not?" Mary asked, looking affectionately into her mother's face.

"I suppose so, Mary."

"Won't it be right for us to reduce our expenses, and make the most of what we have left?"

"It certainly will, Mary."

"Then let us do what seems to be right, and we shall see further, I am sure, as soon as we have acted."

Thus urged, Mrs. Turner consented to relinquish her boarders, and to move into a small house, at a rent very considerably reduced.

Many articles of furniture they were obliged to dispose of, and this added to their little fund some five hundred dollars. About two months after they were fairly settled, Mary said to her mother--

"I've been thinking a good deal lately, mother, about getting into something that would bring us in a living."

"Well, child, what conclusion have you come to?"

"You don't like the idea of setting up a little store?"

"No, Mary, it is too exposing."

"Nor of keeping a school?"

"No."

"Well, what do you think of my learning the dress-making business?"

"Nonsense, Mary!"

"But, mother, I could learn in six months, and then we could set up the business, and I am sure we could do well. Almost every one who sets up dress-making, gets along."

"There was always something low to me in the idea of a milliner or mantua maker, and I cannot bear the thought of your being one," Mrs.

Turner replied, in a decided tone.

"You know what Pope says, mother--

'Honor and shame from no _condition_ rise; Act well your part, there all the honor lies.'"

"Yes, but that is poetry, child."

"And song is but the eloquence of truth, some one has beautifully said," responded Mary, smiling.

The mother was silent, and Mary, whose mind had never imbibed, fully, her mother's false notions, continued--

"I am sure there can be no wrong in my making dresses. Some one must make them, and it is the end we have in view, it seems to me, that determines the character of an action. If I, for the sake of procuring an honest living for my mother, my little brothers, and myself, am willing to devote my time to dress-making, instead of sitting in idleness, and suffering James and Willie to be put out among strangers, then the calling is to me honorable. My aim is honorable, and the means are honest. Is it not so, mother?"

"Yes, I suppose it is so. But then there was always something so degrading to me in the idea of being nothing but a dress-maker!"

Just at that moment a young man, named Martin, who had lived with them during the last year of their experiment in keeping boarders, called in to see them. He kept a store in the city, and was reputed to be well off. He had uniformly manifested an interest in Mrs.

Turner and her family, and was much liked by them. After he was seated. Mrs. Turner said to him--

"I am trying, Mr. Martin, to beat a strange notion out of Mary's head. She has been endeavouring to persuade me to let her learn the dress-making business."