four dollars and eighty-five cents. And yesterday she said she couldn’t come to clean any more on Saturdays. I’m sick and tired of it.”

Raymond shook a sympathetic head. “Same way down at the store. Seems everything’s that way now. You can’t get help and you can’t get goods. You ought to hear our customers. Yesterday I thought I’d go clear out of my nut, trying to pacify them.”

Cora inserted the entering wedge, deftly. “Goodness knows I love my home. But the way things are now � “

“Yeh,” Ray said, absently. When he spoke like that Cora knew that the invisible rim was revolving in his mind. In another moment he would be off to the little cabinet in the bathroom where he kept his tools and instruments.