He
always needed powder and safety-pins and new socks, and presently
he had to have a coloured woman to do his washing, for Nancy was
growing stronger and more interested in life in general, and came
to the conclusion that he might safely be left for a few moments
with Esmeralda, now and then.
He paid for these favours in his own way, and neither Bert nor
Nancy ever felt that it was inadequate. When his sober fat face
wrinkled into a smile of welcome to his father, Bert was moved
almost to tears. When she wheeled him through the streets, royally
benign after a full bottle, rosy-cheeked in his wooly white cap,
Nancy felt almost too rich. Junior filled all the gaps in her
life, it mattered not what she lacked while she had Junior.
The forty dollar income melted as quickly as the twenty-five
dollar one, and far more mysteriously. Nancy would have felt once
that forty dollars every week was riches, but between Junior's
demands, and the little leakage of Esmeralda's wages, and her
hearty lunch twice a week, and the milk, and the necessarily less-
careful marketing, they seemed to be just where they were before.
"There must be some way of living that we can afford!" mused
Nancy, one March morning at the breakfast table, when the world
looked particularly bright to the young Bradleys.
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