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. “You not only feel awkward yourself if you look poor, but cause other people to feel so,” he said; “and that is making yourself a nuisance: you have no business to do that if you can avoid it.” So, though the Hibberts had only a small house, it was pretty and well arranged. Their simple meals were daintily served, and everything about them had an air that implies content dashed with luxury. In fact, they lived as people can live now, even on a small income, and especially in London, in comfort and refinement. Still, it was a difficult task to pull through, and Walter felt that he ought to be making more money. He knew, too, though he did not tell his wife so, that the constant work and anxiety were telling on him; he wanted another but a far longer bracing-up than the one he had had seven years ago at Brighton. “A sea voyage would be the thing,” he thought, “only I don’t see how it could be managed, even if I could get away.” The last year had been a fortunate one in some respects: an aunt of Mrs. Hibbert’s had died, leaving them a hundred pounds and a furnished cottage near Witley, in Surrey. It was a dear little cottage, they both protested—red brick, of course, as all well-bred cottages are nowadays, standing in an acre and a half of its own fir-wood, and having round it a garden with tan paths and those prim flowers that grow best in the vicinity of fir. It would be delightful to stay there in the summer holidays, they agreed, or to run down from Saturday to Monday, or, by-and-by, to send the children there for a spell with the governess when their parents were not able to get away from town. Walter had tried sending Florence and the children and going down every week himself, but he found “it didn’t work.” She was always longing to be with him, and he with her. It was only a broad sea and a few thousand miles that would make separation possible, and he did not think he could endure that very long: he was absurdly fond of his dear little wife.