boy helped a lot.

Women had long been important

investors and handled so much money that women managers were common. Many girls quit to get married soon after being trained, so being brought up as a girl yet certain to stay with the bank was most important, and I was assured I would be in line for promotion as soon as I was familiar with the work.

So we decided on a complete change. Alice had married and lived in town. Irene, of course, was with her first love in a large beauty parlor, run by an old lady who wanted to retire and offered her the chance of buying it on easy terms. Then mother was offered a housekeeping position with week-ends free. So she decided to sell our house and moved into town. An old friend was a real estate man and he helped us, soon finding exactly what we wanted, a nice small house close to the business section, and a deep lot where we could garden. A young couple took our old house and this provided the down payment.

But moving was a hectic experience. The old couple in our new house were moving to a warm dry climate on account of some lung trouble, so we expected to move gradually. But we had promised the young couple to move in time to let them get settled before their expected baby arrived. But the baby fooled us by arriving ahead of time. We had to dump everything into any box that was handy and get out. Hunting for spoons in our new home I found them with the bedding.

With everything in confusion and piled all over we were trying to get some sort of order, and tired and hungry thinking of how to get some sort of lunch, when a very pleasant lady came in, introduced herself as our next neighbor and said she was sure we were in too much confusion to eat properly, so she and her husband wanted us for lunch and to get acquainted. We were glad to accept.

The neighbor was a builder who had been lucky in buying and sub-dividing land, so while hardly middle aged had partly retired doing just enough to keep occupied. They had one daughter, my age, a bookkeeper in a hard- ware store that her father had an interest in. She was a lovely girl and I felt I wanted her for a friend and she