Naturally, being about the house, he noticed the way Carrie did things.  She was far from perfect in household methods and economy, and her little deviations on this score first caught his eye.  Not, however, before her regular demand for her allowance became a grievous thing.  Sitting around as he did, the weeks seemed to pass very quickly.  Every Tuesday Carrie asked for her money.

“Do you think we live as cheaply as we might?” he asked one Tuesday morning.

“I do the best I can,” said Carrie.

Nothing was added to this at the moment, but the next day he said: 

“Do you ever go to the Gansevoort Market over here?”

“I didn’t know there was such a market,” said Carrie.

“They say you can get things lots cheaper there.”

Carrie was very indifferent to the suggestion.  These were things which she did not like at all.

“How much do you pay for a pound of meat?” he asked one day.

“Oh, there are different prices,” said Carrie.  “Sirloin steak is twenty-two cents.”

“That’s steep, isn’t it?” he answered.

So he asked about other things, until finally, with the passing days, it seemed to become a mania with him.  He learned the prices and remembered them.  His errand-running capacity also improved.  It began in a small way, of course.  Carrie, going to get her hat one morning, was stopped by him.

“Where are you going, Carrie?” he asked.

“Over to the baker’s,” she answered.

“I’d just as leave go for you,” he said.

She acquiesced, and he went.  Each afternoon he would go to the corner for the papers.

“Is there anything you want?” he would say.

By degrees she began to use him.  Doing this, however, she lost the weekly payment of twelve dollars.

“You want to pay me to-day,” she said one Tuesday, about this time.

“How much?” he asked.

She understood well enough what it meant.

“Well, about five dollars,” she answered.  “I owe the coal man.”

The same day he said: 

“I think this Italian up here on the corner sells coal at twenty-five cents a bushel.  I’ll trade with him.”

Carrie heard this with indifference.

“All right,” she said.

Then it came to be: 

“George, I must have some coal to-day,” or, “You must get some meat of some kind for dinner.”

He would find out what she needed and order.

Accompanying this plan came skimpiness.

“I only got a half-pound of steak,” he said, coming in one afternoon with his papers.  “We never seem to eat very much.”

These miserable details ate the heart out of Carrie.  They blackened her days and grieved her soul.  Oh, how this man had changed!  All day and all day, here he sat, reading his papers.  The world seemed to have no attraction.  Once in a while he would go out, in fine weather, it might be four or five hours, between eleven and four.  She could do nothing but view him with gnawing contempt.