Aunt Anne, Volume 1 by W.K. Clifford — Read

Many things had happened to Mr. and Mrs. Hibbert in those seven years. Most important of all-to themselves, at least-was the birth of their two children, lovely children Mrs. Hibbert declared them to be, and in his heart her husband agreed with her. But the time came when Walter found to his dismay that even lovely children would sometimes cry, and that as they grew older they wanted room to run about with that constant patter-pattering sound that is usually more delightful to a mother's ear than to a fathers, especially when he has to produce intelligible copy. So the Hibberts moved away from the little flat in which they had begun their married life, to an ugly little upright house sufficiently near Portland Road to enable Walter to get quickly to the office. There a nursery could be made at the top of the house, where the children would be not only out of sight, but out of hearing.

Walter did a great deal of work, and was fairly well paid, but that did not mean a large income for a young couple with two children and three servants, trying to keep up an appearance before the world. He wrote for magazines and literary journals, occasionally he did a long pot-boiler for one of those reviews he called refuges for destitute intellects; and altogether was thrown much among men better off than himself, so that he did not like to look poor. Besides, he preferred to live with a certain amount of comfort, even though it meant a certain amount of anxiety, to looking poverty-stricken or shabby for the sake of knowing precisely how he would stand at the end of the quarter, or being able at any moment to lay his hand on a ten-pound note.