But by degrees Mrs.
Raymond drifted into another class of work. She became a nurse,
and, in a situation where her conscientiousness was invaluable,
slowly established a connection that in time kept her constantly
busy. She won the regard of an important physician, and not only
won it but kept it, and thus little by little found her way into
good houses, where she was highly paid and treated with
consideration.
Had it not been for the seventeen hundred dollars and the five per
cent interest upon it, she could have earned enough to keep
herself and her son very comfortable in the three rooms they
occupied on Seventh Street. But this debt, ever present in the
minds of both mother and son, hung over them like a cloud and took
every penny there was to spare. Those two years from fifteen to
seventeen were the most terrible in Raymond's life. At an age when
he possessed neither philosophy nor knowledge and yet the fullest
capacity to suffer, he had to bear, with what courage he could
muster, the crudest buffets of an adverse fate.
Raymond drudged at his books, passed from class to class and
returned at night to the empty rooms he called home, where he
cooked his own meals and sat solitary beside the candle until it
was the hour for bed. His mother was seldom there to greet him. As
a nurse she was kept prisoner, for weeks at a time, in the houses
where she was engaged. It meant much to the boy to find a note
from her lying on the table when he returned at night; more still
to wait at street corners in his shabby overcoat for those
appointments she often made with him.
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