It had been a bad week with Vandover.  The paint-shop had given him no work to do for ten days, and he had been forced to get along in some way upon the interest of his bonds—­that is to say, upon five dollars and seventy-five cents a week.  Two dollars and seventy-five cents of this went for his room rent, one dollar and ninety for his shoes, and Tuesday afternoon he had bought a package of cigarettes for ten cents.  By Saturday morning he had spent seventy-five cents for food.

When the paint-shop gave him enough work it was Vandover’s custom to buy a week’s commutation ticket at a certain restaurant.  He never ate at the hotel; it was too expensive.  By the commutation system he could buy two dollars and twenty-five cents’ worth of meals for two dollars, paying in tickets at each meal.

But such a thing had been impossible this week.  He had been forced to fall back upon the free-lunch system.  In two years Vandover had learned a great deal; even his dulled wits had been sharpened when it had come to a question of food.  The brute in him might destroy all his finer qualities, but even the brute had to feed.  When work failed him at the beginning of the week Vandover was not unprepared for the contingency; the thing had happened before and he knew how to meet it.

On Monday he beat up and down the Barbary Coast, picking out fifteen or twenty saloons which supported a free-lunch counter in connection with the bar.  He took his breakfast Monday morning at the first of these.  He paid five cents for a glass of beer and ate his morning’s meal at the lunch counter:  stew, bread, and cheese.  At noon he made his dinner at the second saloon on his route.  Here he had another glass of beer, a great plate of soup, potato salad, and pretzels.  Thus he managed to feed himself throughout the week.

It was always his great desire to feed well at Sunday’s dinner, to spend at least a quarter on that meal.  It was something to be looked forward to throughout the entire week.  But to get twenty-five cents ahead when he was out of work was bitter hard.  That week he had started out with the determination to eat but two meals a day.  He would thus save five cents daily and by Sunday morning would be thirty cents to the good.  But each day his resolution broke down.  At breakfast he would resolve to go without his lunch, at lunch he would make up his mind to go without supper, and at supper he would tell himself that now at least his determination was irrevocable—­he would eat no breakfast the next morning.  But on each and every occasion his hunger proved too strong, his feet carried him irresistibly to the saloon lunch counters, whether he would or no.  At no time in his life had Vandover accustomed himself to self-denial; he could hardly begin now.