Henry always walked a long route from the shop in order to avoid passing the houses of the doctor and the carpenter whom he owed.
Once he had saved a little money; that was twenty-odd years before; but he had invested it foolishly, and lost every cent.

That transaction he regarded with hatred, both of himself and of the people who had advised him to risk and lose his hard-earned dollars.
The small sum which he had lost had come to assume colossal proportions in his mind.

He used, in his bitterest moments, to reckon up on a scrap of paper what it might have amounted to, if it had been put out at interest, by this time.

He always came out a rich man, by his calculations, if it had not been for that unwise investment.

He often told his wife Sylvia that they might have been rich people if it had not been for that; that he would not have been tied to a shoe-shop, nor she have been obliged to work so hard.
Sylvia took a boarder--the high-school principal, Horace Allen--and she also made jellies and cakes, and baked bread for those in East Westland who could afford to pay for such instead of doing the work themselves.