After paying something on the room, the laundry in full, and buying oatmeal, dried apples, and condensed milk for the week to come, there remained barely enough for one man’s meals, much less for the food of three, during the ensuing seven days. Boyde’s contribution brought the budget to, perhaps, twenty dollars all told. Something, too, had to be allowed daily to car-fares for Kay, while my own expenses in getting about after assignments, only recoverable at the end of the week, were considerable. The weather was turning colder at the same time, for it was now past mid-October. Our overcoats had to be redeemed. Boyde’s wisdom in obtaining only the strictly necessary became evident. We redeemed the overcoats out of my second week’s pay. Boyde himself had no overcoat at all. As we were all about the same height and build, clothes were interchangeable. There was a discussion every morning, when I left the other two, in bed and on the sofa respectively, as to who should wear what. We had now pawned with Ikey various items: a Gladstone bag, two top hats, some underwear, and two pairs of boots. These were on separate tickets, by Boyde’s advice. Tennis trousers, and several summer shirts were together on another ticket. All that winter Kay and I wore no underwear but a vest. The bag and top hats were taken out and put in again regularly every week for many months. There was only one article that, selfishly, I could never pawn or sell--the fiddle. Dried apples and hot water--with expensive oatmeal we had to be very sparing--constituted our dinner for four nights out of the week; coffee and bread and butter for breakfast, coffee and “sinkers” for lunch completed my dietary. Occasionally Boyde or Kay, having been invited to a meal, brought home something in their pockets, but not often. We felt hunger every day, only the evening dried apples and hot water giving a sense of repletion that yet did not really allay the pangs of appetite, though it stopped the dull gnawing until sleep finally obliterated it. Kay and I, but never Boyde, oddly enough, had vivid and amusing dreams of food, and one invariable topic of conversation every night as we dined at Krisch’s, or gobbled apples and oatmeal, was the menu we would order when things improved.... But Krisch’s, after a time, we found too difficult and tempting, with the good smells, the sight of people eating at other tables, the lager beer, the perfume of cigars; and many a time, with the price of a dinner in our pockets, we preferred to eat in our room.