But in all our little arrangements on this satellite of the Sun, we are apt to forget—among a multitude of other things—two important facts. We are the inhabitants of a planet who keep alive only by a daily consumption of the material products of that planet; we are members of a crude collective organization which distributes these essential products in accordance with certain bizarre rules painfully evolved from chaos by primitive brains. George Augustus certainly forgot these two facts—if he had ever recognized them. A man, a woman and a brat cannot live forever on £170 and a few odd guineas a month. They couldn’t do it even in the eighteen nineties, even with extraordinary economy. And Isabel was not economical. Neither, for that matter, was George Augustus. He was mean, but he liked to be pretty comfortable, and his notions of the pretty comfortable were a bit extravagant. Torn between his respect for the Right Hnble the Lord Tennyson’s well-known predilection for Port and Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne’s less notorious but undisguised preference for brandy neat, George Augustus finally became original, and fell back on his favourite claret. But, even in the nineties, claret was not cheap; and three dozen a month rather eat into an income of four to six guineas. And then Isabel was inexperienced. In housekeeping inexperience costs money. So a time arrived when the £170 was nearly at zero, and the few guineas a month became fewer instead of more numerous. Then George, young George, developed some infant malady; Isabel lost her head, and insisted on a doctor; the doctor, like all the English middle classes thought a Writer was a harmless fool with money to be bled ruthlessly, called far more often than was necessary, and sent in a much bigger bill than he would have dared send a stockbroker or a millionaire. Then George Augustus had the influenza and thought he was going to die. And after that Isabel was stricken with hemorrhoids in her secret parts; and had to be treated. Consequently, the bank balance of a few guineas was turned into a deficit of a good many pounds; and the affable Bank Manager rapidly became strangely unaffable when his polite references to the overdraft remained unsatisfied with the manna of a few cheques. It became obvious to Isabel—and would have long ago become obvious to almost any one but George Augustus—that Luv and WRITING in a cottage were hopelessly bankrupt.