I talked this over with Ruth and we both decided that somehow, in some way, we must save some money every year. We started in by reducing our household expenses still further. But it seemed as though fate were against us for prices rose just enough to absorb all our little economies. Flour went up and sugar went up, and though we had done away with meat almost wholly now, vegetables went up. So, too, did coal. Not only that but we had long since found it impossible to keep to ourselves as we had that first year. Little by little we had been drawn into the social life of the neighborhood. Not a month went by but what there was a dinner or two or a whist party or a dance. Personally I didn't care about such things but as Ruth had become a matron and in consequence had been thrown more in contact with the women, she had lost her shyness and grown more sociable. She often suggested declining an invitation but we couldn't decline one without declining all. I saw clearly enough that I had no right to do this. She did more work than I and did not have the daily change. To have made a social exile of her would have been to make her little better than a slave. But it cost money. It cost a lot of money. We had to do our part in return and though Ruth accomplished this by careful buying and all sorts of clever devices, the item became a big one in the year's expenses. I began to look forward with some anxiety for the next raise. At the office I hunted for extra work with an eye upon the place above; but though I found the work nothing came of it but extra hours. In fact I began to think myself lucky to hold the job I had for a gradual change of methods had been slowly going on in the office. Mechanical adding machines had cost a dozen men their jobs; a card system of bookkeeping had made it possible to discharge another dozen, while an off year in woollens sent two or three more flying, among them the man who had found me the position in the first place. But he hadn't married and he went out west somewhere. Occasionally when work picked up again a young man was taken on to fill the place of one of the discharged men. The company always saved a few hundred dollars by such a shift for the lad never got the salary of the old employee, and so far as anyone could see the work went on just as well. While these moves were ominous, as I can see now in looking back, they didn't disturb me very much at the time. I filled a little niche in the office that was all my own. At every opportunity I had familiarized myself with the work of the man above me and was on very good terms with him. I waited patiently and confidently for the day when Morse should call me in and announce his own advance and leave me to fill his place. I might have to begin on two thousand but it was a sure twenty-five hundred eventually to say nothing of what it led to. The president of the company had begun as I had and had moved up the same steps that now lay ahead of me.