mill. I wanted to have a dinner pail of my own, with a whole meat-pie

in it, or a half-pound of round steak with its gravy dripping over a middle of mashed potatoes with milk and butter in them! Then there were apple dumplings to consider, and freedom from coal picking and the dirty life on the dumps. All in all, I knew it would be an excellent exchange, if possible. I spoke to my uncle about it one noon-hour.

“Why can’t I work in the mill, too?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you rather get some learning, Al?” he asked. “You know men can’t do much in the world without learning. It’s brains, not hands, that makes the world really go ahead. I wish you could get a lot of schooling and perhaps go to college. It’s what I always wanted and never got, and see where I am to-day. I’m a failure, Al, that’s what I am!”

“But aunt says that I’ve got to go in the mill as soon as I can, uncle.”

His face grew sad at that, and he said, “Yes, through our drinking and getting in debt! That’s what it’s all leading to! It’s a pity, a sad pity!” and he grew so gloomy that I spoke no more about the matter that day.

It was one of the paradoxes of my home, that being heavily in debt for our steamship tickets and household furnishings, and both giving a large amount of patronage to the saloons, my aunt and uncle involved themselves more inextricably in debt by buying clothes and ornaments on the “Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week” plan. There was no economy, no recession of tastes, no limit of desire to save us. Every penny that I secured was spent as soon as earned. I learned this from my foster parents. Uncle had his chalk-mark at the saloon, and aunt received regular thrice-a-week visits from the beer pedler. On gala days, when there was a cheap excursion down the bay, aunt could make a splendid appearance on the street in a princess dress, gold bracelets, a pair of earrings, and gloves (Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week plan). When Mrs. Terence O’Boyle, and Mrs. Hannigan, daughter to Mrs. O’Boyle, and Mrs. Redden, the loom fixer’s wife with her little baby, came to our house, after the breakfast had been cleared away, and the men were hard at work, Aunt Millie would exclaim, “Now, friends, the beer man’s just brought a dozen lagers and a bottle of port wine. Sit right up, and make a merry morning of it. You must be tired, Mrs. Hannigan. Won’t your babby take a little sup of port for warming his stomach?” Of course, Mrs. O’Boyle returned these parties, as did her daughter and Mrs. Redden.

My uncle dared not say too much about the visits of the beer-wagon, because he had his own score at the saloon, and his appetite for drink was transcendant. Aunt had little ways of her own for pacifying him in the matter. She would save a half dozen bottles till night, and then, when he came home, she would say, “Now, Stanwood, after tea, let’s be comfortable. I’ve six bottles in for you, and we’ll take our comfort grand!”

By Friday morning the financial fret began. My aunt, as financier of the house, had the disposal of her husband’s fifteen dollars in charge. In the disposal of this amount, she indulged in a weird, incomprehensible arithmetical calculation, certainly original if not unique. In place of numerals and dollar signs, she dotted a paper with pencil points, and did some mysterious but logical ruminating in her head. Her reasoning always followed this line, however:

“Fifteen dollars with a day out, that leaves--let me see--oh, say in round numbers, thirteen, maybe a few cents out. Well, now, let me see, out of that comes, first of all, forty cents for union money, if he pays it this week; two and a half for rent, only we owe fifty cents from last week, which we must pay this, or else we’ll be thrown out. Then there’s fifteen cents for that dude of an insurance man--he says he’ll lapse us if we let it run on like we have. Let him do it, the old cheat! I don’t believe they’d plan to pay us if any of us should die. They’re nothing but robbers, anyhow. Where was I, Al? Let me see, there’s owing a dollar for the furniture--WHEN will we have it paid for?--and there’s two dollars that should be paid the Jew, only we’ll have to satisfy him with fifty cents this week, because there’s a day out.” (The Jew was the man who kept the “New England Clothing and Furnishing Company,” from whom we had bought our clothes, a set of furs, and the gold bracelets on instalments.) “This week’s bill for groceries is five dollars and sixty-three cents, the baker has owing him about seventy-five, the meat man let me have them two ham bones and that shank end, and I owe him for that; there’s some white shirts and collars at the Chinaman’s, but I want to say right here that your uncle will have to pay for those out of his own spending money. That’s too much of a luxury, that is; we can’t go on with such gentlemanly notions in this house and ever get ahead. Oh, these debts, when will they be paid! That is all I think of except the beer man. He won’t wait, whatever comes or goes. There, that reckons up to--why, how in the name of God are we going to face the world this way? I’m getting clean worn out with this figuring every week!”

After finding that she would not have money enough to go around to satisfy all the clamorants, she would proceed with a process of elimination, putting off first the tradesman who received explanations with the most graciousness. The insurance man she did not care for, so he had to be put off, but, with his own interests in mind, he would carry us out of his own pocket until some grand week when aunt would feel kindly towards him, and she would generously make up all back payments. Aunt always went to the uttermost limit of credit possibility, arranging her numerous creditors like checkers on a board to be moved backwards and forwards week by week. The _beer man got his pay every week_. He did not allow _his_ bills to grow old. In arranging for that payment, aunt used to say, as if protesting to her own conscience, “Well, suppose some others _do_ have to wait! I want to have a case of lager in over Sunday. We’re not going to scrimp and slave without _some enjoyment_!”

Week after week this same exasperating allotment of uncle’s wage took place, with but minor variations. Time after time the insurance would drop behind and would be taken up again. Time after time the Jew would threaten to put the lawyers on us. Time after time the grocer would withhold credit until we paid our bill, yet the beer-wagon stopped regularly at our door, and Mrs. O’Boyle, her daughter, and Mrs. Redden would exchange courtesies and bottles. And Aunt was always consoling her sister women on such occasions with this philosophy: “The rich have carriages and fine horses and grand mansions for enjoyment; we poor folks, not having such, must get what comfort we can out of a stimulating sup!”

And Mrs. Redden would reply, “Yes, Mrs. Brindin, you’re right for sure. Just warm a bit of that ale with a bit of sugar stirred in, will you, please? It will warm the baby’s belly. I forgot to bring his milk bottle, like the absent-minded I am.”

_Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday_

_Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday_

The reopening of the public-schools in the fall found Aunt Millie stubbornly refusing to allow me to enter. “I shall never know anything,” I protested. But she replied, with confidence, “All knowledge and wisdom isn’t in schools. There’s as much common sense needed in getting a living. I’ll keep you out just as long as the truant officer keeps away. Mind, now, and not run blind into him when you’re on the street. If you do--why, you’ll know a thing or two, young man!”

Uncle pleaded with her in my behalf, but she answered him virulently, “Stop that, you boozer, you! We must get out of debt and never mind making a gentleman, which you seem set on. I’d be ashamed if I was you. Let him only earn a few dollars, and we’d be relieved. Goodness knows when you’re going to drop out, the way you’re guzzling things down. It wouldn’t surprise me to see you on your back any day, and I want to be ready.”

But some days later, my uncle came back home from work with much to say. “Look here, Millie, it might be good for us to send Al to school right away. If he must go in the mill, as it seems he must as soon as he can, then it’s to our advantage to get him in right away!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he can’t go into the mill, according to law, until thirty weeks after he’s thirteen, and can show his school-certificate.”

“But he’s only just turned eleven,” protested my aunt, “that would keep him in the school practically three years. _Three years!_”

“Normally, it would,” agreed Uncle Stanwood, “but it don’t _need_ to take that long, if we don’t care to have it so.”

“I’d like to know why!”

“Well, Millie,” explained uncle, “Al’s not been to school in America, yet. All we have to do is to put his age forward when he does go in--make him a year or two older than he actually is. They won’t ask for birth certificates or school papers from England. They will take our word for it. Then it won’t be long before we can have him working. Harry Henshaw tells me the trick’s common enough. Then when Al’s worked a while, and we get out of debt, he can go on with his schooling. It’s the only way to keep ahead, though I do hate to have him leave school, God knows!”

“None of that cant,” snapped aunt; “if it wasn’t for your drinking he wouldn’t have to go in the mill, and you know it.”

“Yes,” agreed uncle, sadly, “I know it!”

“Then,” said aunt, once more referring to the immediate subject of the conference, “it’s all decided that we get him in as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” agreed uncle, “we can put him any age we want, and lie about it like many are doing. What age shall we make him, Millie?”

“Better push his age forward as near to thirteen as possible,” said aunt. “He’s big for eleven, as big as some lads two years older. Lets call him twelve and a half!”

“Twelve, going on thirteen,” answered my uncle.

“Yes,” mused his wife, “but nearly thirteen, say thirteen about Christmas time, that would give him thirty weeks to go to school, and he would be in the mill a year from now. That will be all right.”

“If we get caught at it,” warned uncle, “it means prison for us, according to law.”

“Never mind, let’s take our chances like the rest,” answered aunt with great decision. “You tell me there aren’t any ever get caught!”

“Oh,” sighed uncle, “it’s safe enough for that matter, though it’s hard and goes against the grain to take Al from school.”

“_Stop that cant!_” thundered Aunt Millie. “I won’t have it. You want him to go into the mill just as bad as I do, you old hypocrite!”

“Don’t flare up so,” retorted uncle, doggedly. “You wag too sharp a tongue. It’s no use having a row over the matter. Let’s dispose of the thing before bedtime.”

“What else is there to settle?” asked my aunt.

“Al’s got to have a new birthday.” Aunt Millie laughed at the notion, and said, addressing me, “Now, Al, here’s a great chance for you. What day would you like for your birthday?”

“June would do,” I said.

“June _won’t_ do,” she corrected, “the birthday has got to come in winter, near Christmas; no other time of the year is suitable. Now what part of November would you like it? We’ll give you that much choice.”

I thought it over for some time, for I seriously entered into the spirit of this unique opportunity of choosing my own birthday. “The twentieth of November will do, I think,” I concluded.

“The twentieth of November, then, it is,” answered my aunt. “You will be thirteen, _thirteen_, next twentieth of November, mind you. You are _twelve, going on thirteen_! Don’t forget that for a minute; if you do, it might get us all in jail for per-_jury_! Now, suppose that a man meets you on the streets to-morrow and asks you what your age is, what will you tell him?”

“I’m thirteen, going on----no, I mean twelve, going on thirteen, and will be thirteen the twentieth of November!”

“Say it half a dozen times to get it fixed in your mind,” said aunt, and I rehearsed it intermittently till bedtime, so that I had it indelibly fixed in my mind that, henceforth, I must go into the world and swear to a lie, abetted by my foster parents, all because I wanted to go into the mill and because my foster parents wanted me in the