‘Yes, but they count also. Now, in the matter of money, I feel that every husband should allow his wife a yearly sum of her own, to be paid over to her, and kept by her, so that she may make her own arrangements for herself. It is degrading to a woman to have to apply to her husband every time she wants a sovereign. On the other hand, if the wife has any money, she should have the spending of it. If she chooses to spend part of it in helping the establishment, that is all right, but I am sure that she should have her own separate account, and her own control of it.’ ‘If a woman really loves a man, Frank, how can she grudge him everything she has? If my little income would take one worry from your mind, what a joy it would be to me to feel that you were using it!’ ‘Yes, but the man has his self-respect to think of. In a great crisis one might fall back upon one’s wife—since our interests are the same, but only that could justify it. So much for the wife’s money. Now for the question of housekeeping.’ ‘That terrible question!’ ‘It is only hard because people try to do so much upon a little. Why should they try to do so much? The best pleasures of life are absolutely inexpensive. Books, music, pleasant intimate evenings, the walk among the heather, the delightful routine of domestic life, my cricket and my golf—these things cost very little.’ ‘But you must eat and drink, Frank. And as to Jemima and the cook, it is really extraordinary the amount which they consume.’ ‘But the tendency is for meals to become much too elaborate. Why that second vegetable?’ ‘There now! I knew that you were going to say something against that poor vegetable. It costs so little.’ ‘On an average, I have no doubt that it costs threepence a day. Come now, confess that it does. Do you know what threepence a day comes to in a year? There is no use in having an accountant for a husband, if you can’t get at figures easily. It is four pounds eleven shillings and threepence.’ ‘It does not seem very much.’ ‘But for that money, and less, one could become a member of the London Library, with the right to take out fifteen books at a time, and all the world’s literature to draw from. Now just picture it: on one side, all the books in the world, all the words of the wise, and great, and witty; on the other side, a lot of cauliflowers and vegetable-marrows and French beans. Which is the better bargain?’ ‘Good gracious, we shall never have a second vegetable again!’ ‘And pudding?’ ‘My dear, you always eat the pudding.’ ‘I know I do. It seems an obvious thing to do when the pudding is there in front of me. But if it were not there, I should neither eat it nor miss it, and I know that you care nothing about it. There would be another five or six pounds a year.’ ‘We’ll have a compromise, dear. Second vegetable one day, pudding the next.’ ‘Very good.’