The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

"Oh, it isn't at all hot," said Ray, and in fact the air was blowing / freely in through the plants at the open window. Then he sat down, as if / to prove that it was not too hot; there was no other reason that he / could have given for staying, instead of going back to Kane and her / father.

"We can keep the windows open on this side," said Mrs. Denton, "but the / elevated makes too much noise in front. When we came here first, it was / warm weather; it was stifling when we shut the windows, and when we / opened them, it seemed as if the trains would drive us wild. It was like / having them in the same room with us. But now it's a little cooler, and / we don't need the front windows open; so it's very pleasant."

Ray said it was delightful, and he asked, "Then you haven't been in New / York long?"

"No; only since the beginning of September. We thought we would settle / in New Jersey first, and we did take a house there, in the country; but / it was too far from my husband's work, and so we moved in. Father wants / to meet people; he's more in the current here."

As she talked, Mrs. Denton had a way of looking down at her apron, and / smoothing it across her knees with one hand, and now and then glancing / at Ray out of the corner of her eye, as if she were smiling on the / further side of her face.

"We went out there a little while ago to sell off the things we didn't / want to keep. The neighbors took them. " She began to laugh, and Ray / laughed, too, when she said, "We found they had taken _some_ of them / before we got there. They might as well have taken all, they paid us so / little for the rest. I didn't suppose there would be such a difference / between first-hand and second-hand things. But it was the first time we / had ever set up housekeeping for ourselves, and we had to make mistakes. / We had always lived in a community."

She looked at him for the impression of this fact, and Ray merely said, / "Yes; Mr. Kane told me something of the kind."

"It's all very different in the world. I don't know whether you've ever / been in a community?"

"No," said Ray.

"Well," she went on, "we've had to get used to all sorts of things since / we came out into the world. The very day we left the community, I heard / some people in the seat just in front of me, in the car, planning how / they should do something to get a living; it seemed ridiculous and / dreadful. It fairly frightened me."

Ray was struck with the literary value of the fact. He said: "I suppose / it would be startling if we could any of us realize it for the first / time. But for most of us there never is any first time."

Mrs. Denton said: "No, but in the community we never had to think how we / should get things to eat and wear, any more than how we should get air / to breathe. You know father believes that the world can be made like the / Family, in that, and everybody be sure of a living, if he is willing to / work."

She glanced at Ray with another of her demure looks, which seemed / inquiries both as to his knowledge of the facts and his opinion of them.

"I didn't know just what your father's ideas were," he said; and she / went on:

"Yes; he thinks all you've got to do is to have patience. But it seems / to me you've got to have money too, or you'll starve to death before / your patience gives out."

Mrs. Denton laughed, and Ray sat looking at her with a curious mixture / of liking and misgiving: he would have liked to laugh with her from the / poet in him, but his civic man could not approve of her / irresponsibility. In her quality of married woman, she was more / reprehensible than she would have been as a girl; as a girl, she might / well have been merely funny. Still, she was a woman, and her voice, if / it expressed an irresponsible nature, was sweet to hear. She seemed not / to dislike hearing it herself, and she let it run lightly on. "The / hardest thing for us, though, has been getting used to money, and the / care of it. It seems to be just as bad with a little as a great / deal -- the care does; and you have to be thinking about it all the time; / we never had to think of it at all in the Family. Most of us never saw / it, or touched it; only the few that went out and sold and bought / things."

"That's very odd," said Ray, trying the notion if it would not work / somewhere into literature; at the same time he felt the charm of this / pretty young woman, and wondered why her sister did not come back. He / heard her talking with Kane in the other room; now and then her voice, / gentle and clear and somewhat high, was lost in Kane's laugh, or the / hoarse plunge of her father's bass.

"Yes," Mrs. Denton went on, "I think I feel it more than my husband or / my sister does; they just have to earn the money, but I have to take / care of it, and see how far I can make it go. It's perfectly / distracting; and sometimes when I forget, and do something careless! " / She let an impressive silence follow, and Ray laughed.

"Yes, that's an anxious time for us, even if we're brought up with the / advantages of worldly experience."