This was in September and there wasn’t an item on our bill that did not equal or exceed town prices for the best. Taking into account the fact that, as Ruth said, there were no bargain sales, it is easy to see that where we had looked for a reduction in living expenses we had really met with a substantial increase. Not only this, but in most cases the goods we received were inferior to those we secured in town. As for meats, the prices charged were exorbitant. Now neither Ruth nor I had reached, or ever will I trust, a point where we didn’t care how much we were paying. The lesson of the ginger jar was too firmly implanted for us to accept without a question, as we did when we were living in the suburbs, whatever we might be charged. But aside from this I was genuinely interested in the economic side of the matter. I wanted to know how this condition of things happened to exist. It looked to me on the face of it as though there was something wrong in having to pay as much in the country for butter, eggs, vegetables and poultry as we had to pay in the city. So I went down to the village and had an interview with my fat friend Moulton. He welcomed me cordially and listened to my questions with a smile. “I’m not kicking on your making a fair profit,” I told him, “but I simply can’t figure out why it’s necessary for you to charge so much in order to do it. If you can show me, I’ll trade with you; if you can’t I’m going to trade in town after this.” “That’s right,” he nodded, “I hear your kick every year from summer folks. They come up here to save money and go away sore because they don’t.” “But why don’t they?” I demanded. “’Cause I have to make a profit in order to live,” he answered. “Now look a-here, I ain’t so big a corporation that I have to hide my books to steer clear of an investigation from Congress. If you’ve got a spare hour I’ll show you some things that city folks don’t reckon on.” And he did. I’ll give him credit for making the whole business clear to me in less than an hour. He opened my eyes to a few facts that I’ve never seen mentioned in any fairy dreams about the simple life that I’ve ever read. And what is more they were cold facts that don’t seem to get into even the heavier treatises on New England life. In the first place, he proved to me with his books, that he bought not only his staples from the city market, but even his produce. “I can’t buy a pound of decent butter here,” he said. “The farmer’s butter you hear so much about isn’t made any more; what little is made is loaded down with salt to a point where you couldn’t pay ’em twenty cents a pound for it. I can’t buy a decent chicken. All they bring in here are the old fowls that you couldn’t cut up with a broad ax.” “What do they do with their chickens?” I asked. “They don’t raise many to start with.” “Why not?” “Too lazy for one thing, and then they say they have to pay too much for corn.” “Why don’t they raise their own corn?”