"Carleton," he said, "the only thing I've got agin ye is thot ye ain't an Irishmon. Faith, ye'd make a domd foine Irishmon." "It's up to you now," I said, "to make a damned fine American." It wasn't more than two months later that Dan came to me to ask my opinion on a request of Sweeney's. It looked a bit off color and I said so. "You can't do it, Dan," I said. "It manes throuble," he said. "Let it come. We're back of you with both feet." Dan followed my advice and the trouble came. He was fired from his job as foreman under Sweeney. But you can't keep down as good a foreman as Dan was and he had another job within a week. A few months later I had another job myself. I was made foreman with my own firm at a wage of two dollars and a half a day. When I went back and announced this to Ruth, she cried a little. Truly our cup seemed full and running over. CHAPTER XIV FIFTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK My first thought when I received my advance in pay was that I could now relieve Ruth of some of her burdens. There was no longer any need of her spending so much time in trotting around the markets and the department stores. Nor was there any need of her doing so much plotting and planning in her endeavor to save a penny. Furthermore I was determined that she should now enjoy some of the little luxuries of life in the way of better things to wear and better things to eat. But that idea was taken out of me in short order. "No," she said, as soon as she recovered from the good news. "We mustn't spend one cent more than we've been spending." "But look here," I said; "what's the good of a raise if we don't use it?" "What's the good of a raise if we spend it?" she asked me. "We'll use it, Billy, but we'll use it wisely. How many times have you told me that if you had your life to live over again you wouldn't spend one cent over the first salary you received, if it was only three dollars a week, until you had a bank account?" "I know that," I said. "But when a man has a wife and boy like you and Dick--" "He doesn't want to turn them into burdens that will hold him down all his life," she broke in. "It isn't fair to the wife and boy," she said. I couldn't quite follow her reasoning but I didn't have to. When I came home the next Saturday night with fifteen dollars in my pocket instead of nine she calmly took out three for the rent, five for household expenses and put seven in the ginger jar. I suggested that at least we have one celebration and with the boy go to the little French restaurant we used to visit, but she held up her hands in horror. "Do you think I'd spend two dollars and a half for--why, Billy, you wouldn't!" "I'd like to spend ten," I said. "I'd like to go there to dinner and buy you a half dozen roses and get the three best seats in the best theater in town," I said. She came to my side and patted my arm. "Thank you, Billy," she said. "But honest--it's just as much fun to have you want to do those things as really do them."