The Golden Ledger
Copyright© 2026 by BillMax
Chapter 8: Visiting the In-Laws
Truth be told, Caleb himself admitted he’d been a little rash.
But there was a reason for everything. These past few years, every time he visited his mother-in-law’s house, he and Clara were treated with scorn on account of his lowly trade.
With only a couple of days left before New Year’s, he’d wanted to buy his wife a fine rig to show those people.
Caleb Walker was, indeed, a man a woman could count on for life.
As for everything else, he’d deal with it later.
Clara had learned to drive a team long ago, but she seldom drove and wasn’t very handy at it. She crept along the road at a snail’s pace, slower than a walking mule.
Little Annie was even more excited than she was, wriggling nonstop on the back seat, her loose milk teeth flashing in one long smile.
She kept tugging on her papa’s arm, asking what’s this for, what does that do?
Could the big buggy play music or something?
That would certainly have to be arranged. He meant to buy her a little stereoscope and a box of picture cards for New Year’s.
“Caleb, how come you had hundreds of dollars again?”
After a while, once she’d settled in and felt less tense, Clara finally asked the question that had been on her mind all along.
“I earned it selling oranges, of course.”
Caleb said, “You wouldn’t believe it. The day after I spent three hundred eighty-five on stock, a blizzard hit. No oranges could come in by rail, so naturally prices shot sky-high. I just took the chance to earn a little more.”
Clara had no reason to doubt him. Naturally she was happy her husband could make money.
“If you spent all the money on the buggy, what about the house?”
“No need to rush that. Annie won’t start primary school till after next June.”
Caleb, holding Little Annie, said, “I was thinking, since we’re going to buy a house, let’s buy a bigger one. Next year, once my income’s steadier, maybe we could have another child.”
Thinking about another child?
Clara had no objection. If the household could afford it, one child really was too few.
Before, she’d never dared consider it, but now it could certainly be given some serious thought.
When they got home, his boyhood friend the Young Marshal had gone out special and bought a big string of firecrackers.
He even tied a red ribbon on the new buggy and set off a long, rattling barrage.
Of course, silver dollars wrapped in paper were a must as well.
Back in the farm country, paying cash for a Concord buggy would have been big news for sure.
But in Sterling City it was nothing special.
Caleb meant to settle the matter of the house within the next three months, since oranges wouldn’t sell so well once the holidays were over.
He also needed to think about other ways of making money.
...
The day before New Year’s Eve.
Winnie was still busy seeing her classmates.
She was only two years younger than Clara. Unlike her older sister, who’d been raised by their grandparents in the country, she’d had a different upbringing.
She’d been brought back to Sterling City when she was in grammar school.
Having lived with her parents in the city so long, she’d naturally grown a sense of superiority.
At most her family counted as middling folk in Sterling City.
Her mother was a true Sterling City native, but her father wasn’t.
Help from the older generation had let her parents settle and make a home in the great city.
Their flat wasn’t big: three bedrooms and a parlor, a hundred twenty square yards all told.
If you took out the shared stairs and hall, it was only about a hundred square yards.
Winnie’s scorn for her brother-in-law, an outsider, came mostly from the deep-rooted sense of superiority common to Sterling City people.
In their eyes, outsiders were born inferior.
On top of that, her brother-in-law’s trade was such an embarrassment. Just think, if she became a famous star and people found out her brother-in-law peddled oranges in the street, it would be a blot on her name.
That was why she’d kept pushing her sister to divorce him.
“Say ... Winnie, you ought to go take a look at your sister’s picture on the Arcade board.”
“What’s there to see on the board? Either she’s showing off her husband or showing off Little Annie.”
Winnie thought her sister had become a hopeless bumpkin from living in the country too long. It had given her such homespun habits.
Nothing like her.
She showed off fine restaurants or afternoon tea.
“Your sister bought a buggy.”