The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-03-06

existence a state of ecstacy beyond anything she had ever dreamed.
 oh, yes. it was like that-being engaged to Rolf. Janet was engaged and she was in love-. Y
 She and Rolf didn't talk so much about when they were going to be married. They didn't talk about it because it was the one thing that shadowed their dreamy happiness. They wanted to be mar ried and they couldn't because they didn't have the money. That was why Janet sat in Bruce Hamilton's office from'9 o'clock until - and often long afterward-five days
 week and for half days on Satur- days when she would so much rather have been bustllng about a blue and white kitchen of her own. Give up her job to cook and wash dishes and mend and iron clothes! Indeed she would! She'd have been glad to.
 For Janet and Rolf there couldn't be q blue and white. kitchen, a vine- clad bungalow or even tiny, cheap, third floor apartment. They couldn't be married because the combined total of their savings accounts was $214 short of $500.
 Five hundred dollars that total must be before Janet and Rolf could go to the court house and then to the church and solemnly exchange promises to Nlove ana cherish one another until death. It might not seem a large sum to a great many people. To Janet anu
 Rolf 1t was huge. indeed. It was
 rfa mi. fll which a matrimonial venture might safely be launched.
 Janet knew this because she had read it in d magazine. It was Jan ct who had insisted the $500 must
 be in the bank before their mar riage, There had been arguments. Dozens of them. Rolf had wanted to hunt up a prcache" the very next day after that precious in- sane bus ride on an April night when, with a dozen other passen- gers about them. he had somehow got out the all-important question to a girl whose whisper was inaudl. ble but whose star-lit eyes said "Yes.'
 She had loved him for those ar guments but of course she couldn't agree. Wh.'. Rolf was earning $35 a week at the Atlas Advertising Agency and her own salary was $50. Rolf had q life insurance pol icy and boasted blithely of the
 $1675 in his wallet-$3 of which he owed his roommate. With paper and pencils and great many hlgh- ly irrelevant Interruptions they arr eued and added and subtracted - and arrived at Janets original statement. There must be $5Op in the bank!
 It wasn't, she pointed out, what the $500 would buy; it was what it stood for. Janet knew quite lot about poverty. She knew Daisy
 Mccullough who had worked in the Every Home office until. gayly and responsibility, she had married -and been divorced six months later. She knew Mrs Frisbie whose husband was an invilad and whose little girl couldn't see. She had known Joe PlatZ, too, well enough
 to grow a little faint when she read how they found his body Tn the river. Joe Junior had been buried the week before. Joe Platz
 had lost his job and couldn't lace
 being burden to his wife.
 Yes, Janet knew euOu6H VI po' erty so that all of Rolfs pleading couldn't win her from her insis, tence that they must work ana save before they could be married. Five hundred dollars was the iow- est possible figure. At first they had assured each other the $500 could be saved cas- 1 uy, In six months at the most! Rolf had made a budget of his $35 and showed Janet how to make one. Somehow at the end of the month the budget was there bui l the money wasn't. They had had 1 wonderful times together but theater tickets and dinners and gard enias for Janet's coat collar had more than taken the sum Rolf had set down under the heading,
 Savings"
 | So there were more sessions with pencil and paper, more adding and subtracting. Out of all this had come surther arguments and then
 gradually, the savings accounts hao | begun to swell. Instead of theate' | parties and fresh flowers and dane
 ing at the Crystal Slipper ther
 were long walks now and cafetertf
 meals and visits to the neighbor- | hood movie house where tickets ] cost sonlv 15 cents.