However, before we had finished, he remarked quietly and with appealing intonation, "Sweetheart, on what date did you leave New York?" I replied that it had been the 7th. "Well, Nan, I was in Asbury Park on the 5th, two days before you got there." Not even a retaliatory tone, simply a statement of fact! He was nearly always right, and made me feel ashamed of myself more than once. I just worshipped him when he proved himself and his love for me in ways like this.
I went from the Monmouth Hotel to a rooming-house. My new quarters proved to be very unsatisfactory—damp, dark and dusty. Moreover, the roomers were mostly elderly people who looked at me severely as I passed in and out. But while there someone told me of a boarding-house where three meals a day could be obtained for the nominal sum of $9 a week. I began eating there and it was then that I met Mrs. Marietta Tonneson.
I do not recall how I met Mrs. Tonneson. But I secured a front room in her rooming-house on the third floor for $14 per week, and moved into it immediately, having been at the other place about a week. This combination brought my room and board to $15 a week, which I decided was as well as I could do in Asbury Park. I had been paying $40 a week at the Hotel Monmouth and both Mr. Harding and I agreed that it was steep. Mr. Harding was always very generous with me and I had ample funds for my comfort during the summer, but I seemed to need a good bit of money even then, and it was a satisfaction to have my board and room reduced to the minimum.
Mrs. Marietta Tonneson (Mrs. Martin Tonneson she had been until her husband's death made her a widow about a year or so previous) lived with her brother Billy in a large house just around the corner from my boarding-house. They had
