He wondered if he could break through the barrier of his housekeeper's deafness so far as to impress upon her the fact that she ate too much meat. She spent too much, also, on small things like pepper and salt. This reckless buying of pepper and salt made the grocer's bill an eternal irritation, for it really seemed absurd to be spending all one's money on pepper and salt. Yet people did live on £150 a year. Coleridge had married with less than that and apparently had got on perfectly well, or would have if he had not been foolish in other ways. How on earth was it done? He really must try and find out how much for instance Birdwood spent every week on the necessities of life. That was the worst of Oxford ... one came down without the slightest idea of the elementary facts of domestic economy. There had been a lot of soda bought last week. He remembered seeing it in one of those horrid little slippery tradesmen's books. Soda? What was it for? Vaguely Guy thought it was used to soften water, but there were plenty of rain tubs at Plashers Mead, and soda must be an unjustifiable extravagance. Then Miss Peasey herself was getting £18 a year. It seemed very little, so little indeed that when he paid her every month, he felt inclined to apologize for the smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him with £132. Knock off £30 for meat and he had £102. £18 must go in rent and there was left £84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also Graves his deaf and dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so sometime or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental calculations, but by no device was he able to make the amount required come to less than £82. That left £2 for Pauline, and then by the way there was the dog-licence which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and sixpence for Pauline! Guy roamed through the sad arbours of Wychford Abbey in the depths of depression, and watched with a cynical amusement the birds searching for grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a positive sense of injury against love which had descended with proverbial wantonness to complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine the Rectory without Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was gone. Yet distinctly when he had first met the Greys, he had not thought more often of Pauline than of her sisters. What perversity of circumstance had introduced love? "It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."