Poor Nancy, she was not to know rest or leisure for many years to
come. She was clever, and as resolutely as she had solved their
first, simple problem, she set about solving this new one. They
had forty dollars a week with which to manage now, but the extra
money seemed only a special dispensation to provide for the
growing demands of Junior.

Junior needed a coach, a crib, new shirts--"he is getting immense,
the darling!" was Nancy's one rapturous comment, when four of
these were bought at sixty cents each. In November he needed two
quarts of milk daily, and what his mother called "an ouncer" to
take the top-milk safely from the bottle, and a small ice box for
the carefully prepared bottles, and the bottles themselves. 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