Gosling looked sly. "Indeed?" he said, with simulated surprise. "And why not? Ain't I to be allowed to judge of the nature of the investment I'm goin' in for? I might give you an 'int or two from the gentleman's point of view." Blanche shook her head. "I haven't added it up yet," she said. Gosling did not press the point; he returned to his original position. "I dunno where you ladies 'ud be if you 'adn't no gentlemen to look after you." Mrs Gosling smirked. "We'll 'ope it won't come to that," she said. "China's a long way off." "Appears as there's been one case in Russia, though," remarked Gosling. He saw that he had rather a good thing in this threat of male extermination, a pleasant, harmless threat to hold over his feminine dependents; a means to emphasize the facts of masculine superiority and of the absolute necessity for masculine intelligence; facts that were not sufficiently well realized in Wisteria Grove, at times. Mrs Gosling yawned surreptitiously. She was doing her best to be pleasant, but the subject bored her. She was a practical woman who worked hard all day to keep her house clean, and received very feeble assistance from the daughters for whom her one ambition was an establishment conducted on lines precisely similar to her own. Millie and Blanche had returned to their calculations and were completely absorbed. "In Russia? Just fancy," commented Mrs Gosling. "In Moscow," said Gosling, studying his Evening News. "'E was an official on the trans-Siberian Railway. 'As soon as the disease was identified as a case of the new plague,'" read Gosling, "'the patient was at once removed to the infectious hospital and strictly isolated. He died within two hours of his admission. Stringent measures are being taken to prevent the infection from spreading.'" "Was 'e a married man?" asked Mrs Gosling. "Doesn't say," replied her husband. "But the point is that if it once gets to Europe, who knows where it'll stop?" "They'll see to that, you may be sure," said Mrs Gosling, with a beautiful faith in the scientific resources of civilization. "It said somethin' about that in the bit you've just read." Gosling was not to be done out of his argument. "Very like," he said. "But now, just supposin' as this 'ere plague did spread to London, and 'alf the men couldn't go to work; where d'you fancy you'd be?" Mrs Gosling was unable to grasp the intricacies of this abstraction. "Well, of course, every one knows as we couldn't get on without the men," she said. "Ah! well there you are, got it in once," said Gosling. "And don't you gels forget it," he added turning to his daughters. Millie only giggled, but Blanche said, "All right, dad, we won't." The girls returned to their calculations; they had arrived at the stage of cutting out all those items which were not "absolutely necessary." Five pounds had proved a miserably inadequate sum on paper.