Mrs. Maxon Protests by Antonio Hope

The first condition of being able to please yourself is to have enough to live upon. Stephen Aikenhead was entirely right about that. Thrift, exercised by yourself or by some beneficent forerunner, confers independence; you can live upon the world, and yet flout it. (Within the limits of the criminal law, of course, but why be a criminal if you have enough to live upon? You lack the one really good excuse.) Imagine the state of affairs if it were not so -- if banks, railways, docks, and breweries could refuse you your dividends on the ground of irregularity in your private life! What a sudden and profound quarter-day reformation of manners among the well-to-do classes opens before our fantastic vision! Really enough to turn the clergy and ministers of all denominations green with envy!

This economic condition was fulfilled for Godfrey Ledstone's establishment -- just fulfilled according to Winnie's ideas, and no more. She had a hundred and fifty pounds a year; Godfrey's earnings averaged about two hundred, or a trifle more. His father had been in the habit of giving him a cheque for fifty at Christmas -- but that addition could scarcely be relied on now. It was not riches; to one accustomed to Devonshire Street and a rising King's Counsel's income it was by no means riches. But it was enough; with care it would support the small quarters they had taken near Baron's Court Station in West Kensington -- a studio, a small dining-room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and "the usual offices" (unusually cramped "the usual offices"). No room for expansion! But they did not mean to expand at present.