They had come to the point where they must borrow money from their
friends, and that, though there were many who would have opened
their safes to them, they had agreed was the one thing they would
not do, or they must starve. The alternative was equally
distasteful.
Carter had struggled earnestly to find a job. But his inexperience
and the season of the year were against him. No newspaper wanted a
dramatic critic when the only shows in town had been running three
months, and on roof gardens; nor did they want a "cub" reporter
when veterans were being "laid off" by the dozens. Nor were his
services desired as a private secretary, a taxicab driver, an agent
to sell real estate or automobiles or stocks. As no one gave him a
chance to prove his unfitness for any of these callings, the fact
that he knew nothing of any of them did not greatly matter. At
these rebuffs Dolly was distinctly pleased. She argued they proved
he was intended to pursue his natural career as an author.
That their friends might know they were poor did not affect her,
but she did not want them to think by his taking up any outside
"job" that they were poor because as a literary genius he was a
failure. She believed in his stories. She wanted every one else to
believe in them. Meanwhile, she assisted him in so far as she could
by pawning the contents of five of the seven trunks, by learning to
cook on a " Kitchenette," and to laundry her handkerchiefs and iron
them on the looking-glass.
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