“I wish,” flashed through Starratt’s mind, “that I had asked for ten dollars.”

* * * * *

As Fred Starratt came down the steps leading from the California Market with a bottle of oyster cocktails held gingerly before him he never remembered when he had been less in the mood for guests.  A passing friend invited him to drop down for a drink at Collins & Wheeland’s, but the state of his finances urged a speedy flight home instead.  At this hour the California Street cars were crowded, but he managed to squeeze into a place on the running board.  He always enjoyed the glide of this old-fashioned cable car up the stone-paved slope of Nob Hill, and even the discomfort of a huddled foothold was more than discounted by the ability to catch backward glimpses of city and bay falling away in the slanting gold of an early spring twilight like some enchanted and fabulous capital.

At Hyde Street he changed cars, continuing his homeward flight in the direction of Russian Hill.  He prided himself on the fact that he still clung to one of the old quarters of the town, scorning the outlying districts with all the disdain of a San Franciscan born and bred of pioneer stock.  He liked to be within easy walking distance of work, and only a trifle over fifteen minutes from the shops and cafes and theaters.  And his present quarters in a comparatively new apartment house just below the topmost height of Green Street answered these wishes in every particular.

On the Hyde Street car he found a seat, and, without the distraction of maintaining his foothold or the diversion of an unfolding panorama, his thoughts turned naturally on his immediate problems.  The five dollars had gone a ridiculously small way.  Four oyster cocktails came to a dollar and a quarter, and he had to have at least six cigars at twenty-five cents apiece.  This left him somewhat short of the maid’s wage of three dollars for cooking and serving dinner and washing up the dishes.  If Helen had engaged Mrs. Finn, everything would be all right.  She knew them and she would wait.  Still, he didn’t like putting anybody off—­he was neither quite too poor nor quite too affluent to be nonchalant in his postponement of obligations.

When he arrived home he found that Helen had been having her troubles, too.  Mrs. Finn had disappointed her and sent a frowsy female, who exuded vile whisky and the unpleasant odors of a slattern.

“I think she’s half drunk,” Helen had confessed, brutally.  “You can’t depend on anyone these days.  Servants are getting so independent!”

The roast had been delivered late, too, and when Helen had called up the shop to protest she had been met with cool insolence.

“I told the boy who talked to me that I’d report him to the boss.  And what do you suppose he said?  ’Go as far as you like!  We’re all going out on a strike next week, so we should worry!’ Fancy a butcher talking like that to me!  I don’t know what things are coming to.”