Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUNGLE LOVE. two pieces of cake on Monday or Tuesday, some other day of that week she had to go without. What with this, that, and other reprehensible extravagancifs allied” to silk stockings, Julie was always broke before the boy came round with her pay envelope at ‘three o’clock Fridays. But if her hats and her shoes, shirt-waists and—oh, well, all of the trimmings that even a poor but honest working girl feels the need; if all these tended to produce an effect of over smart- ness, Julie never looked untidy or hard up. And such is the vitality of youth, it did not appear that her hody lacked the vitamines and calories we are supposed to have—or fade. , On Saturdays Julie swung’ her typewriter cover over at two sharp, and went shopping until six, and if she found a bargain at a dollar ninety-eight, she certainly earned it. Bring forth the man who will tramp the department-stores for three hours and more to save fourteen cents on the price of a shirt, or seven on a pair of socks. Maybe his limit for a hat 1s two dollars and a half, and he’d like to.get it for le8s; but he won’t go eye-shopping. It is pure good luck if mister man walks into a store and captures a bargain in headgear at two ‘thirty-five, and even so, the chances are that when he gets home he finds he has a moth-eaten hid. A woman will hunt and stretch ten dollars to the purchasing power of fifteen, and— she won’t buy a pig in a poke. A man? Weil, he sometimes has a real-estate bar- gain thrown at him, or he dreams that cop- - per is going yp and blindly follows a hunch, he cleans up or is cleaned out. The gods of chance dispose; but how often does he owe his first little bit of capital for imvest- ment or speculation to his wafe’s so-called . petty habit of bargain hunting? Not all women use this flair for stalking sales and haunting remnant counters to the _end of sequestering an accumulation of bits for a rainy day, or for the benefit of an 1m- provident, much amused husband. Some of them are prodded to the chase by sheer poverty or @n overweaning infatuation for things pretty and stylish, and Julie Somers was one of these. The reflex from the war Jjsad made her shopping a more arduous job than ever. Of course there were still bar- O87 gains to be found; but they were not among the sensibly pretty and dainty feminine necessities. The real finds were among the expensive, superflously rich in material and elaborate in design and finish. The low- priced shirt-waists were dear at three dol- lars; but a slightly marred confection in medium quality silk and embroidered with beads could be bought for nine fifty— marked down from fifteen. A bargain for a girl with money to spend lavishly. The tax on luxuries did not help Julie in her search for finery. It seemed to her that everybody had money enough to flock to purchase the stores’ best and thus keep prices up and limit her choice in things that could be bought at a moderate price. “T wish I’d quit my job at the office and gone as a munition worker while I had the chance. Guess I'd have a bit laid by now,” had more than once been Julie’s expressed regret. . She had no accumulation of funds to draw upon, and urged by a pathetic ambi- tion to make a show, she stinted herself in comfort and much preferred the fripperies of life to the solids. One good square meal, having a thick, juicy steak as a ptéece de re- sistance, would have spoiled the look of a two-dollar bill. A week’s lunches! A pair of stout-soled, low-heeled shoes would have cost half the price and lasted twice as long as her favored, high-arched patent pumps. Stupid extravagance, and perniciously wun- hygienic, opines the flat-footed matron who in her youth probably squeezed her internal organs into an eighteen-inch corset, and coveted her neighbor’s dolman — whatever that may have been. | Naturally, being so superior in our con- duct of our own affairs, we know Julie was . all wrong in her sense of values, and wofully inferior to a practical-minded business girl; but, as all of us have not had the same dis- _advantages in education and upbringing, our subjéct under trial cannot altogether be held responsible or censured too severely. Julie had, in common with other girls, a mother; but for all practical purposes of good moral guidance by precept and ex- ample, she was orphaned. As for her father, he had died before her perceptions began to make permanent records on the we fl ° ecomnilelaoolks (CO