The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-02-06


 week for board.
 It had been Ju1ia's first confident
 plan to move the family from the Mis- sion entirely. There were lovely roomy flats in the Western Addition or there were sunny houses out to- ward the end of Sutter street, where her mother and grandmother would be infinitely more comfortable and more accessible She was stunned when her grandmothe flatly refused. Even her mothers approval of the plan was singularly wavering and a half hearted. Mrs. Cox argued shril1y that they were poor folks, and poor folks were better off not trapesing all over the city, and Emeline added that Ma, would fee1 lost without her back yard and her neighbors, to say noth- ing of the privilege of bund1ng up in a flat back bonnet and brown shawl, hot weather or cold, and trotting off to St. Charles's Church at all hours of the day and night
 'I don't care, Julie," Mrs. Page made her daughter exquisitely un- comfortable by saying very formally, 'tbut there's no girl in Gods world that wouldn't think of asking her mother to stay with her for a while till things got settled, anyway. You haven't done iti''
 s'Well, I'll tell you, Mama@'' Ju- Iia began, but Emeline interrupted her.
 You haven't done 1t, Julie, and let me tell you right now it looks queer. I'm not the one that says it; every one says it. don't want to force myself where I'm not
 ttBut, Mama dear, we're only at the hotel now!" Julia protested feeling a hypocrite.
 q see,'' said Eme1ine, land I'm not good enough, of course ''I couldn't meet your friends, of course!" She laughed heartily. That's good!" she said appreciatively.
 Julia used to flush angrily under these whitening comments, at first; later, her poor little mothers attitude filled her only with a great pity. For Emeline was suffering a great deal now, and Julia longed to be able to take her with her to the Pacific Ave- nue house, if only to prove that its empty spIendor held no particular ad- vantages over the life On Shotwell street, for Eme1ine. She was definitely better off in her mothers warm kitchen, gossiping and id1ing her days away, than she would have been limp ing afm1essly about in Julia's house, and catching glinnpses of Julia only
 
 day.
 More than this, Jim would not hear of such a visit; it never even came to a discussion between husband and wife; he would have been frankly as much surprised as mortified at the idea So Julia did what was left to her, for her mother: listened patient ly to long complaints, paid bills, and Jim's generous cheque with many a gold piece pressed into her mothers shopping-bag. She car ried off her young cousins to equip them with winter suits and sensible shoes, aware all the while that their high-heeIed slippers and flimsy cheap silk dresses, the bangles that they slipped over dirty little hands, and the fancy combs they pushed into their untidy hair, were infinitely more prized by them.
 The Shotwel1 Street house was still I ose and stuffy, the bedrooms as dark 2 -7d horrible as Julia remembered them, and no financial aid did more than temporarily soften the fan1ily's settled opinion that poor folks were poor folks, and predestined to money trouble. Julia knew that when the clothes she bought her cousins grew dirty they would not be cleaned; she knew that her grandmother had never taken a tub bath in her life and rath- CT scorned the takes of tub baths; she knew that such a thing as the week Iy washing of clothes, the transforma- ton of dirty linen into piles of frag- rant whiteness never took place in the Shotwe1 Street house. Mrs. Cox indeed liked to keep a tub full of gray suds standing in the kitchen, and oc- castonally souse in it one of her calico wrappers, or a shirt waist belonging to the girls. These would be dried on ! rope stretched across the kitchen, and sooner or later pressed with one of the sad irons that Julia remember ed as far back as she remembered anything; rough-looking old irons, one with a broken handle, all with he figure seven stamped upon them with a mould. Mrs. Cox had several drifting about the kitchen, 'olds of dark cloth that had been so often wet and singed that the cover ng had split, and the folded news paper inside showed it's burned edges, put she never could find one when she wanted 1t, and usually tmprovised new one from a grocery bag or the folds of her apron, and so burned her Teined old knotted hands.
 Julia came to see that her actual presence did them small good, and
  what thankfully, began to conf1ne her attentions more and more to mere fi- lancial assistance. She presently ar .anged for the best medical care for Ter mother, even for hospital stay, put her attitude grew more and more hat of the noncommitta1 outsider, vho helps without argument and dis approves without comment Evelyn lad made a great success of her but such aid as she ,ou1d give must be given her sister, or Marguerite's early and ill-consid- red marriage had come to the usual point when, with an unreliable hus- ,and, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and bitter poverty md want, she found herself much in he position of her mother, twenty | ears before. May was still living in Oakland, widowed. Her two sons were tt home and working, and with a mau income from rented rooms as we'll, the three and her youngest laughter, Regina, somehow managed