From the Relief Society Magazine, November 1931 –

Stretching Dollars

By Elaine Hyde Thomas

Esther was enjoying her new home. She enjoyed it with her eyes for it was clean and new and expressed unnumbered possibilities for adornment. She enjoyed it with her body, for though it was larger than her former home, it was arranged to require less work and it stayed clean longer. Esther appreciated these things and was happy.

As she prepared the lunch table, she heard Dan in the bed-room talking to their three months old baby Peggy.

“Peggy, O Peggy! You cute little kid, look at your dad! Like the looks of that streak of sunshine on the mirror, do you? Guess you are crazy about your surroundings like the rest of us. Well, if it hadn’t been for you, guess we’d still be in the old place. You expensive little bundle!”

It was true. Peggy’s advent forced the necessity of more room. Therefore the new house.

“Dan,” Esther began, when the serving of the children had been attended to, “I just love my new home! And I was thinking today that I haven’t entertained my friends for years; I didn’t have room in the other place. Besides, I’m so proud of this house that I really want to show it.”

“Sure you do, go ahead. It’s all right with me.” Dan was proud, too.

“Of course there are some things I’ll have to have before I can think of entertaining.” After a pause she continued, “So perhaps I hadn’t better plan it right away.”

Dan shifted uneasily and looked at his watch. “Just what things do you mean, Esther?”

Esther hesitated a moment; she had been trying for a week to approach the subject. Now that she had begun it, she must handle it just right.

“Well – the furniture, Dan! I can’t very well show my new home with this old furniture in it. I want the house to look beautiful!”

She looked at Dan and waited. He didn’t answer her at once so she added, “Dan, don’t think I’m dissatisfied – this old furniture is plenty good enough for a while if there’s just the family here alone.”

“Well, my dear, we’d better remain alone a while longer, then. You know, no doubt, that the house cost money!”

That cut Esther. Didn’t she realize? Hadn’t she been patient and careful? What was the use of trying to help if all she got was sarcasm? Instead of crying as she felt like doing, she said, “All right, then, I’ll not entertain. The only refreshment I could serve that would be in keeping with my dining-room furniture, would be hot-dogs and pink lemonade.”

Dan had finished his lunch and those were the words he heard as he closed the door on leaving for the office, without his usual kiss.

Esther hadn’t finished her lunch – however, she leaned forward on her elbows to take a final look as Dan got into his car. She felt resentful. Only last week Dan had put a new bumper on both front and rear of the car, besides getting a new extra tire.

“Of course, he almost had to have the extra tire. But he didn’t have to get those bumpers. I don’t even have an extra supply of absolutely necessary things.”

As the days passed the mood that engulfed Esther didn’t seem to wear off. The first unpleasantness that had occurred in connection with the new home, had left her somewhat numbed. She knew something must be done. Perhaps what she would do could not relieve the immediate necessity, but it would at least relieve her mind. Dan hadn’t mentioned the incident since and from all appearances one would never know he had participated in it.

“Let’s go for a ride tonight, Esther, it will do you and the kiddies good!” Dan urged one evening after dinner.

“All right, let’s,” Tom, the nine-year-old boy, called out as he grabbed his hat and rushed for the door.

“I’m weady, Daddy!” said three-year-old Bobbie.

Dan glanced at Esther, who was wiping jam from Mary Ellen’s mouth, even though she was old enough to have done it nicely herself.

“Coming?” he asked.

“No, not tonight. You take the children. I have something very important to do.”

“But you need the ride, dear, you haven’t been out for a number of days.” Dan was trying to show Esther that he appreciated her even if he had been a little stubborn concerning the furniture.

“There are some things a person can’t do with children around, so you go on without me. I really need this little time to myself.”

A few minutes later found Esther on her knees beside an old trunk in the basement. She was pulling things out with feverish haste, shaking them out, considering them, laying some aside and shoving others back into the trunk disgustedly. So absorbed was she that she didn’t realize how time was passing, and was surprised when she heard the car stop. Dan and the children were home.

“He’s curious!” muttered Esther to herself as she emerged from the back bed-room where she had hurriedly run to deposit her precious bundle.

Dan looked his question when he came in, but Esther didn’t look the answer. A glance at the clock told her that they really had been gone an hour.

The following Sunday, Mary Ellen put on her new fall tam. Dan was reading when she drew his attention to it.

“Look’t my new tam, Daddy! Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

“I should say I do, honey. Where in the world did you get it?”

“Out of the big sleeves of grandma’s old velvet waist!” Mary Ellen hastened to inform him with enthusiasm.

“You don’t mean to tell me your new hat has been hiding in Grandma’s sleeves all these years, do you?” her Daddy asked incredulously.

“O’ course not! The hat wasn’t, but the cloth it’s made of was. Mother made the tam!” she announced with pride.

“Well, it’s a beauty! Now run along to Sunday School or you’ll be late.”

Dan didn’t resume his paper immediately, and was still gazing at the blank wall on the opposite side of the room when Tom dashed in.

“Have I got to go to Sunday School, Dad?” he asked as he grabbed his cap from the table where his mother had laid it in readiness for him.

“Yes – you have twenty minutes. Run along. Say, Son, I’m glad to see your shoes polished so nicely; you seem to be taking more pride in yourself lately.”

“I didn’t shine ‘em – the shoe-mender did. These are my wore out ones that used to be with the junk in the basement. Goo’-bye!”

Dan’s expression was still more puzzled when Tom had gone, and he glanced at Esther with a quizzical smile when she entered.

The following Friday morning while Esther was giving Tom’s ears a final touch before sending him off to school, she asked, “Do you know where old Sin Lu’s vegetable gardens are, Tom?”

“Yes – why?”

“Well, if you are sure you know just where they are, you hurry home from school tonight and we’ll take a little trip, if it isn’t too far. I’ll get Dorothy Brown to stay here with the other children.”

At five thirty that evening as Dan was returning from examining the Swanson place north of town, he passed a trim little woman and a boy with an express wagon, before he noticed who they were. He slowed up, stopped, then backed till he was beside them.

“Esther, what in the world do you think you are doing away out on this dusty road pulling a loaded wagon?”

“Just bringing a few fresh vegetables,” Esther answered lightly.

“Why in thunder do you want to walk away out here for them? The stores have anything you can want.”

“But they aren’t nearly so fresh, and besides they cost about twice as much as these.” Then she added, “Anyway, I enjoy the walk. it’s only a little way out here.”

“Little way! Fully a mile if it’s a foot. Jump in and I’ll empty those things in the back of the car so Tom can pull the wagon home easier,” Dan said.

“Poor little kid! Dan, I can easier walk than he can – all that way! Here, let’s lay the robe over the seat and put the wagon in cross-wise. He can hold it so it won’t scratch anything.”

Reluctantly Dan did as suggested, and they rode home in silence.

That night Esther secretly planned that, if possible, she would have her party as soon as her fall house-cleaning was done. That meant a number of things. She and Mary Ellen must have some fall clothes, and they must be made before the cleaning was done. Afterward she would be too busy with party preparations. Another thing – if she got those things done and fixed up as many other things as she could, she would know just how much she had saved. This she planned to ask Dan for as clothes money that was coming to her. Then she would take it to the furniture store and be able to make a substantial payment on those things she considered she must have before she could entertain.

The next morning, after doing the things that were absolutely necessary in the house, she began to carry out her plans.

“Now let me see, I think I can get the skirt out of those two pairs of trousers. There doesn’t seem to be any up or down to this material. I can turn the legs bottom side up and make a semi-princess effect like they are showing now. There’s plenty in the coat to make the sleeves and upper part. Uncle Bill was so fat and I am so slender,” Esther said aloud to herself, with a pin between her teeth, as she twisted and turned before the mirror. Deciding that way she set to work picking, cleaning and pressing. She even hummed a snatch now and then of any tune that popped into her head. The happiness of a secret endeavor quickened her movements.

That night Dan surprised her by saying, “Let’s see, haven’t you a birthday a week from tomorrow?”

“Yes, why?” Esther answered, astonished. There had been times in their married life when an hadn’t remembered at all and usually he was a week or two late. But to remember a week ahead!

“How about a new fall dress for that day? You need one pretty bad,” Dan said.

“Yes, I do – but – but you had better let me get it so it will be sure to fit. Then you can pay for it,” Esther said a trifle nervously.

O, how she sewed the next week! Peggy had to entertain herself almost entirely, and consider her little stomach lucky if it was fed when nature required that it should be. First she lay on her back in her buggy, till the kewpie swinging from its hood ceased to interest her. Then she was propped between pillows on the bed so she could watch her mother move around. In fact, Peggy was put into positions that she wouldn’t have been allowed to try for months if there hadn’t been such dire necessity for her good behavior. Near the end of one of her very busiest days, she heard an insistent hammering on the back screen.

“Wait a minute, Bobby, mother’s coming,” Esther called.

“Tan’t wait, I dot a fliver in mine finder,” Bobby wailed.

“Here’s mother; let me see that poor finger!”

“Hurst awfo’ bad, mudder.”

He did have a sliver. Not a bad one, but it takes a precious half-hour to remove one of any kind from a tender little finger, and administer the love and kisses that are called for afterward.

“Tom, run to the basement and bring Mother some potatoes. Hurry, I haven’t much time!” Tom had bolted in and was rummaging in the bread-box while Bobbie’s finger was being attended to.

“Gee whiz, Mother, do I have to wait till you cook spuds? I’m as hungry as a lion!”

“Hustle along and it’ll not be a jiffy till I have a fine dinner on the table.”

“Say, Mother, would you jes-a-soon peel a hunk for me first, I want to eat it raw!”

Esther was tired at dinner time. She was cross with Tom and Mary Ellen. She cut her answers to Dan very short, and sighed heavily as she laid Peggy down after undressing her earlier than usual. After dinner Dan settled down with his paper.

“Tom, bring me my bed-room slippers.”

That settled it; this was to be one of his few nights at home. Esther never knew which night he would be home and she had planned on sewing tonight in case he went out. So she got a paper after Peggy and Bobbie were happily in bed, and prepared to read. But no matter what topic she would read, her eyes were sure to rest upon an advertisement showing the latest models in new fall dresses. They were tempting! Not so very expensive, either. But just the same the price of one of them would make a fair-sized payment on the sale price of that over-stuffed living-room furniture. Esther figured to herself, “It’s lucky Uncle Bill didn’t want that suit any longer. It’s so fine and nice and with two pairs of trousers! Why, I’d be a horrid old spendthrift not to use it, even if I had all the money I wanted, to buy furniture with.”

“What are you writing, Esther?”

“Not a check!” she answered sharply, due to fatigue.

“Well, I hardly thought you were. Not on the edge of a newspaper, anyway,” Dan answered, a little surprised at her mood.

“You said I was to have a new dress so I’m looking at these and figuring a little, to help me decide what kind I want,” Esther said somewhat apologetically.

“Get yourself kind of a bright, dashy one! Not loud, you know. But just different. I can’t explain what I mean, but you look around. I’ve seen plenty of that kind in the windows. You’ve worn sombre things too much lately.”

Dashy, different! Those words struck Esther rather forcibly. A dress from Uncle Bill’s old suit would most certainly be different from anything he’d see, but as to being dashy! Well, that was hardly possible, out of navy-blue serge with a white pin-stripe in it. “But maybe – if I put a white tailored collar and cuffs on it!” Well, at least she had started it and she would finish it.

Next morning, as soon as babies and necessary tasks would release her, she went to the back bed-room. She spent, or rather, wasted, the best part of the morning, trying to figure out the dashy part of her dress. She gathered up scraps of bright silks that she had, and tried each piece separately with the dress to see the effect, until she had looked at so many that all looked alike. No – that wouldn’t do, if this dress dashed it would have to be because of style, not because of color combinations. Anyway, this could only be a tailored model, made out of such material. The white collar and cuffs would look the best! By noon she had made that decision and taken a few stitches.

“If I only had a maid to get lunch!” she said aloud. She was glad Dan had gone back to work as soon as he finished eating and had not insisted that she go with him to town to pick out her new dress.

At three o’clock things weren’t going so bad. The old suit was beginning to look like a neat little dress. Two hours more, Esther planned, would complete it. Her humming, which vied in tone and tune, with the song of her sewing-machine, suddenly ceased. She hesitated then started it again. Again she stopped it. No, she wasn’t mistaken!

“Mudder.” Very faintly it came. Rising, she went to the kitchen door. No calling of Mother could be heard there, so after standing a moment she returned to her work. As she seated herself she heard it again – this time with a sobbing sound. “Mudder, oh, Mudder!”

“It must be Bobbie somewhere,” Esther said as she hurried again to the door.

“Bobbie, oh, Bobbie, where are you?”

“Mudder.” His voice sounded farther away than when she was in the bed room. Then she decided that she heard it plainer when she was at the back of the house than she did at the front. She rushed outside and let herself be led by the tiny, sobbing voice. In the vacant lot some distance from the house was a huge hole Tom and his chums had dug. It was tunneled. Her worried brain was sure the call had come from that direction. Her heart felt numb. With an effort she made her feet respond and carry her toward the hole as she called insistently for Bobbie to answer her. Why didn’t he call again. Only one reason entered Esther’s mind. The roof of the tunnel had caved in and Bobbie was suffocating!

“Why didn’t I make Tom mind me when I told him to fill the thing up?” She reproached herself.

Finally she reached it and saw to her relief that the hole yawned open as it had always done. No Bobbie there.

“Thank Providence for that anyway. But where can he be? Bobbie, Bobbie!” She called louder, hurrying back toward the house.

“Mudder.” That was the plainest she had heard it, and glancing toward the house in the direction from which it came, she saw through the basement window, Bobbie, sitting on the top of the coal pile!

“Bobbie, are you hurt? Answer Mother this minute!” Esther demanded in frightened tones.

“No, Mudder,” he sobbed.

Esther rushed into the house and down stairs to get him. “Why, Bobbie, this door wasn’t locked, why in the world didn’t you come up stairs and find Mother?”

“I fought ‘er was a bear ‘ere by the – the – door,” he answered between sobs.

Esther’s body was weak from fright. Her first impulse was to spank Bobbie. But his continued sobs told too well how real his fright had been. Instead she mutely thanked God that Bobbie wasn’t hurt and gathered him up into her arms and kissed him.

Unfortunate indeed is the woman who goes through life without being responsible for the safety of a wide-eyed, trusting child. The finding him safe, after fearing he was dying from your neglect, brings a thrill and thankfulness that is not over-shadowed by any other experience.

By the time Esther had loved Bobbie’s fears away it was five o’clock. Her sewing time was gone, her dress was not finished, and it was her birthday to-morrow. Dan would soon be home and dinner must be prepared before he arrived.

“I must go back to the office, dear, but you go to bed early if I’m not here. You look tired and worn out. I’ll be back just as soon as I can,” Dan urged after dinner.

Esther did need to go to bed early – she was tired. However, when Dan got home at nearly eleven o’clock he met Esther coming out of the back bed-room.

“I thought I told you to go to bed!”

“You did, but really I had some things I must do. Anyway I wasn’t as tired as I looked,” Esther lied.

“Well, my evening has been well spent. If the deal doesn’t fall through, we’ll make a nice little piece of money on that Swanson place north of town. Mr. Boam, the man who may buy it, is crazy about it and doesn’t think eight thousand dollars is too much money for it,” Dan said as he pulled his tie off.

“That’s fine.” Her answer wasn’t very enthusiastic. Dan often told her about big deals, if they didn’t fall through. Besides, her eyes were as tell-tale as a child’s. She dragged herself to her bed-side and slowly got into bed, trying to hide her fatigue from Dan.

When he arose next morning Esther still slept. So he carefully closed the hall door as he went out to make the fire. He called Tom, ate a hurried breakfast and started for work.

It was late when Esther awoke and then only because Peggy fussed. The hour was past her breakfast time. As Esther dressed she felt a vague sense of rush, even before her brain had had time to think out the details of the unfinished dress. The package of cornflakes and partly empty milk bottle beside Dan’s dish told of the hasty bite he had taken before leaving.

“Daddy said to tel you he didn’t call you ‘cause you was so tired last night,” Tom said as he came into the kitchen half-dressed.

“That was mighty good of Daddy,” his Mother replied, at the same time wishing he had called her. “Dan is thoughtful when it comes to my health, and I haven’t done him justice this last week. He has eaten any old thing! He hasn’t scolded or been annoyed at the untidiness of the house, and has been a dear at tending Peggy. But I’ll finish my dress today, and then he shan’t see me nervous and untidy anymore,” thought Esther as she worked.

“Tom, come, you are a slowpoke. You aren’t ready for breakfast yet and I’ve dressed Bobbie and helped dress Mary Ellen, besides tending to Peggy. I’m in an awful hurry this morning.”

“Mother, when you start hurrying, do you ever get time to stop?” Tom asked innocently as he slid into his chair after the others had commenced eating.

“Here’s your cereal, dear,” Esther said, ignoring his question, and handing him his dish.

The morning went all too fast. Peggy was cross. Esther burned her finger while pressing and had to take time to put egg-white on it. It was so tender that she couldn’t sew fast and Dan was back for lunch before she was half ready for him.

“Hello, Mama! how do you feel after your sleep?” He kissed her and patted her arm. Not waiting for an answer, he handed her a letter, then picked up Peggy, whose crying ceased as he did so.

Hurriedly Esther tore it open, read it, reread parts, looked at the signature again, and then at Dan. He was looking questioningly at her.

“Who is your letter from, honey?”

“It’s from Uncle Bill!” Her voice was scarcely audible.

“Well, what’s the news? A funeral or something? Who’s dead?”

“O, Dan, nobody’s dead, but I wish I was. Here, you read it. Uncle Bill wants that old suit of his with the white pin-stripes in it, and two pairs of pants. And I can’t – can’t –”

“Can’t what, dear?” Dan had never seen Esther quite so worked up before over what appeared to him to be a trifle.

“I can’t send it. It isn’t fit to wear! It’s all cut up. Now it’s mostly all sewed up again into a dress for me.”

Dan’s eyes twinkled, the situation struck him so funny. But he was man enough not to laugh. “You have got yourself into a pretty mix-up, Esther. Why didn’t you write and ask Uncle Bill’s permission before seizing his wardrobe?”

“I just thought he’d have taken them if he wanted them. He’s a childish old man anyway; he probably only wants them to wear while he digs in the garden or shovels snow off the side-walk!”

“I don’t want any lunch – you and the children eat without me. I’m going over to Mrs. Brown’s, to ask if Dorothy will stay here with Bobbie and Peggy while I go to town with you.”

Dan filled the children’s plates, then ate his own lunch in silence. He was experiencing confused emotions over what had just happened.

At the first gent’s furnishing store they came to, Esther got out of the car and went in, telling Dan not to wait for her.

“Have you any navy-blue serge suits with a white pin-stripe?” she asked the clerk.

“Let me see, madam, I believe we have one left from last year. Did you want it for a young man?” he asked as he produced the suit. “Size sixteen?”

“O, no. That won’t do! Uncle Bill must be sixty. Thank you very much for your trouble.” Esther walked out and down the street to the next gent’s furnishing store. This time she gave all the needed information without being asked. When the clerk said, “I believe we have just the thing you want. Over this way, please,” Esther was glad indeed. She looked at the suit; the stripes were a trifle too far apart, but she thought that wouldn’t matter. The price? That would have to be all right, there was no other place in town where a man’s suit could be purchased. Anyway, she was going to pay for it in installments out of her own limited spending money, and also do without any new clothes for herself in the spring. But she was glad when the clerk told her it had been marked sixty-five dollars but she could have it for thirty-five because pin-stripes weren’t very good this year.

“Don’t forget to put in both pairs of pants,” Esther reminded him as a finish to her bargain.

“Why, Mrs. Weston – did I say there were two pairs of pants? If I did I surely made a mistake. This suit has but one pair. I’m very sorry!”

“You didn’t say so but I thought all men’s suits had two pairs of pants that could be purchased if one so desired. Well, I can’t take the suit. Uncle Bill said he must have both pairs of pants!” Again she walked out suitless, this time leaving a very mystified clerk. He hadn’t thought before that Mrs. Dan Weston was queer.

Esther realized by this time that her intention could not be carried out, so she went to Dan’s office. She must have help, she had been exhausting her resourcefulness now for weeks, and felt too weary to figure this out by herself. Dan was alone. Esther looked melancholy as she walked in and closed the door, and turned the key to make sure there would be no interruptions.

Dan listened seriously to her story and then said, “Esther, my dear, I’ve realized for a week that you were overdoing yourself. So this morning I stole into the back bed-room before you were awake. I hadn’t imagined that you would undertake quite such a difficult task. After thinking the situation over, I wrote that letter, here on the typewriter, and signed Uncle Bill’s name to it because I recognized the suit. Esther, I didn’t have any idea you wanted your party bad enough to walk miles trying to save five cents on vegetables, then send yourself nearly insane trying to get a new dress for yourself out of Uncle Bill’s old suit!”

“Dan, I think you are a mean old thing to scare me so!” Esther broke in.

But Dan didn’t pay any attention to that. He felt that she had needed her lesson.

“It’s all right now though, honey. Don’t look so mad! Remember the deal on the Swanson place I told you about last night? Well, I finished it up this morning!” He reached into a drawer of his desk. “Here’s a check I made out to you before you came in. Get yourself a dress and use the rest to make a payment on what furniture you need to get before the party.”

Esther was too tired to refuse indignantly. Dan drew her toward him and snuggled her in his arms.

“You aren’t too terribly mad at me now, are you, honey? That was a nice dress you made, Esther. Really! Honest, I never saw better sewing – and the way you made it was fine. But, honey, that isn’t the right kind of cloth to match you. You must have one all soft and silky! I picked one out over at Shay’s that I like. It’s your birthday today, so won’t you run over and see if it fits?”

For answer she looked up and smiled. She looked prettier than he had seen her for weeks, Dan thought, as he kissed her.