Stella never stayed on at the expensive summer resorts after Laurel went. Fifteen miles nearer Boston, along a sandy beach, there was a stretch of board-walk, with the ocean on one side, and on the other, a row of cheap amusement places. Behind this row of amusement places there was a nest of lodging-houses. By occupying a room in one of these houses, and taking her meals outside, Stella could save enough money over what it cost her to live at the expensive summer hotel, to buy several permanents for Laurel, and a wrist-watch, and a fur coat, too, if Stephen still persisted in books.

You’d think, perhaps, you wouldn’t have to economize on three hundred and fifty dollars a month, if there was only yourself and a child to take care of. But gracious, try it! Try it with a little queen like Laurel to bring up and educate, and give half a chance to. When a twelfth of your yearly income went to the private school your little queen attended for five days a week; and two-twelfths to a decent hotel roof to put over her head in the summer; and several other twelfths for a decent roof to put over her head in the winter (Laurel couldn’t live in a tenement), and a big chunk was eaten out of another twelfth by riding-tickets, at the rate of fifty dollars for twenty rides, and completely gobbled up by private dancing-lessons, and private golf and swimming lessons, and heaven knows what not; I tell you what, you have to stretch every single penny you have left to clothe the child properly, to say nothing of yourself, and your own rags.

“I suppose forty-two hundred dollars a year sounds plenty enough to Stephen,” Stella said to her old friend Effie McDavitt. “But Stephen and I have probably got different ideas about how the child should be brought up. Well, I’ll never ask him for any more. I’ll never go groveling to Stephen Dallas for money as long as I live! I’ll tell you that! No, sir-ee! I’ve got some pride, even though he has acted as if I hadn’t any feelings.”

The boarding-houses at Belcher’s Beach, as the amusement boulevard was called, were not attractive. The people who patronized them were not attractive either. The women were loud-voiced and loud-mannered, and spent a good deal of time walking to and from the beach, in bathrobes and canvas sandals; and the masculine element, if one existed, was likely to be found sitting in his shirt-sleeves on the boarding house porch, ready to make remarks to the robed ladies as they came trooping up the steps munching peanuts or popcorn cakes.