Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1918 — Earning Her $37.83 [ARTICLE]

Earning Her $37.83

By JANE OSBORN

(Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) When Stanley Ashton agreed to give thirty thousand dollars for the work of the ambulance corps by the student body of the college from which he some dozen years before had taken his degree, on the condition that the student body would raise a like amount, he little knew what a medley of unusual activities he was starting within the dormitories of that college. “I know it’s going to be hard for the students,” he told the dean of the college when he made the proposal, “but the ambulance corps needs sixty thousand dollars if their work is to be worth while. I’m not a millionaire, and I guess it is as hard for me to get that thirty thousand dollars together as it will be for each of the students to do his or her share toward raising the difference.” The dean was'figuring on the back of an envelope as Stanley Ashton was talking to him. “Yes," he said, having finished his little sum in division. “There are 793 students enrolled this year—about 400 girls and the rest men. That will mean about 137.83 a student, as I reckon it. In my announcement I shall suggest that each student try to raise that sum. It will give zest to their endeavors if each student knows Just what is expected of him.” So the announcement was made, and for the weeks that followed each student of the college went around more

bent on extracting the sum of $37.83 from his financial endowments —and most of the students of this co-educa-tlonal institution were not possessed of an overadequate allowance —than on securing passing grades in their classroom work. Dances, athletics, theatricals —all the usual side Interests of the college—were subservient to this desperate struggle on the part of the students, each to earn the allotted quota. The trouble was they were all doing it at once. Little efforts to extract the money from each other by blacking shoes, pressing clothes, darning socks, etc., were rather useless, since no student had the amount to pay for such services while each was saving his funds for the quota. Fudge was a drug on the market, for who had money to buy fudge? Margaret Benton achieved quite an honor for herself among her friends by announcing that she would give up her Christmas holiday vacation. She had received a check for S2O from home to cover the expenses of her trip and, with her parents’ sanction, she renounced this pleasure so that she might thereby save the larger part of her quota. There was $17.83 to be earned. By going without fudge supplies herself for three weeks she eeked out her. funds till she had but $16.75 to be earned. Then she earned 75 cents by selling one pair of old rubbers, two old textbooks, the gold tips from two outworn fountain pens and a last winter’s hat. Thirty cents she saved by walking downtown and back on three occasions. There then remained $15.70 to be earned, and there her fund remained. Her allowance was exhausted and there was nothing to save, and every means of earning money seemed to be In use already by some of the 793. On a certain gray day, when she had Indulged herself to the extent of using 5 cents carfare to go to collect the pittance that the old-clothes dealer was to allow her for her old hat and rubbers, she sat crowded in the surface car —so crowded, in fact, that she could not help but'hear the conversation of two well-overcoated men beside her. «*

“But what are you going to do about it?” the younger of' the two asked. “I’ve done all I could to comply with the request of the department of agriculture., I had all my fields cultivated on our summer place, and then I couldn’t get men to harvest them. I have had to pay $5 a day for a man to repair the hotbed frames, and- now I’ve had the beds planted to green vegetables in an effort to do my bit towards keeping the’docal market supplied with green goods. I can’t get anyone to transplant the seedlings. Did get a man for 30 cents an hour, but unless some one watched him every mipute he-soldiered.” Margaret heard the man sitting with him suggest that it was more satisfactory to contract the work. Then it didn’t matter if the men did soldier. “But If there aren’t any men to do the work, what ain I to do?” Margaret had only a vague Idea of what a hotbed looked like, but somehow the task sounded easy. She sat quii&tly beside the young man in the warm overcoat and allowed herself to be carried beyond the street where she would t have got oft to return to the dormitory. For several miles more she rode, until in a dreary country lane on the outskirts of the city the man signaled for the car to stop. He alighted, and Margaret alighted, too. He turned to walk up the lane, and Margaret, with face ayerted, followed him at a distance. He went into the front door of a rambling, spacious and well-kept-up country house, and after standing in the dampness in the lane for ten minutes, Margaret rang the doorbell. It wasn’t very easy but it had to be done. She asked to be permitted to do the transplanting, and named as her minimum price—she insisted on Contract work—sls.7o. The man, who

had seated her in front of a cheery wood fire and stood beside her, smiling as she made her proposition, held out against the price. He said it wasn’t worth it, and that he could ill afford to pay fancy prices. But Margaret was obdurate, and finally the bargain was struck. Margaret stipulated that she should be allowed to do the work when she chose. She realized that most of it would have to be done after lecture hours, and mayhap by the light of a lantern. By the aid of one of the men students in horticulture, Margaret gained a smattering knowledge of how the hotbed seedlings should be transplanted. She secured a lantern for her night work and, wearing under her long coat a pair of working overalls, which she borrowed from the same student, she started out for her task. It was not easy, but she persevered, even when her hands were bruised and scratched. / The second afternoon of her work Margaret determined to continue there until nine o’clock, and accordingly took with her a package of sandwiches put up by the dormitory cook, at the direction of the kind-hearted house mother. Margaret was sitting in her overalls, eating the sandwiches by the light of her lantern in the workshed for which her employer had given her the key, when the employer himself appeared at the door. At first his obvious amusement at her position and costume embarrassed her, but it was so good-humored that finally Margaret laughed herself and offered him a piece of her last sandwich. He watched her work and did not criticize. Then, obviously only to have an excuse for lingering with her, he worked with her, always under her direction, and assuming no knowledge of the work himself.

“You are a robber,” he told her, as he worke<| by her side. “It was a holdup game for you to get so much; but it was you or no one, so I had to give in. By the way,” he said, asking a question that had been perplexing him since her first offer to do the work, “it is unusual to find a young woman so in need of funds. Pardon my rudeness,” he hastened to add. “If you didn’t seem to enjoy the work so much I should be sorry that I had let you do it. There must be other more congenial, more remunerative sorts of work.” Margaret did not answer his question nor satisfy his curiosity, and although they became well acquainted, in a measure, during the fortnight that followed, never again did the man inquire more into Margaret’s identity. They did not even discover each other’s names, for acquaintance in the usual acceptance of the word has very little to do with the acquaintance that is sometimes the precursor of a deeper attachment. On the last night of Margaret’s work, when she had transplanted the last succulent head of lettuce and the last leaf of endive, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for the man to tell her that he loved her, and for Margaret, standing there in her clumsy, baggy overalls, her hands loaded with the warm, brown earth, to look quite frankly into his eyes and to tell him that she loved him, too. “And now,” he said, “tell me why and wherefore. Why did you stick me for sls.7o—just that and nothing more?” “Why did you hold out?” she rejoined. “You were dreadfully stingy.” “A man has to be, when he has pledged $30,000 and he isn’t a millionaire.” “Stanley Ashtonl” she gasped. “Why, I somehow imagined you were baldheaded and sixty, with a beard and a diamond stud, and creaky boots. That’s the sort of man I thought you were. Then we have been really working for the same thing. How little my $37.83 looks compared to your $30,000, especially when I’ve held you up for $15.70.” “You aren’t the plucky little girl who gave up her Christmas holidays for the fund? The dean told me about that. It was far finer than anything I’ve done.” And then, in spite of the muddy hands, Stanley Ashton folded the little gardener into his arms —those strong arms, that had somehow struck Margaret when she was crushed against them in the street car two weeks before, as arms it would be very nice to be folded into.