"Certainly," she replied. "Not that we have to teach the piano. No! But it's understood, all the same, that one or another of us can play marches for the children to walk and drill to. In fact," she added, "for something less than thirty shillings a week we do pretty nearly everything, except build the schools. And soon they'll be expecting us to build the new schools in our spare time." She spoke bitterly, as a native of the Congo Free State might refer to the late King of the Belgians. "Thirty shillings a _wik_!" said James, acting with fine histrionic skill. "I thought as you said seventy-two pounds a month!" "Oh no, you didn't!" she protested, firmly. "So don't try to tease me. I never joke about money. Money's a very serious thing." ("Her's a chip o' th' owd block," he told himself, delighted. When he explained matters to himself, and when he grew angry, he always employed the Five Towns dialect in its purest form.) "You must be same as them hospital nurses," he said, aloud. "You do it because ye like it--for love on it, as they say." "Like it! I hate it. I hate any sort of work. What fun do you suppose there is in teaching endless stupid children, and stuffing in classrooms all day, and correcting exercises and preparing sewing all night? Of course, they can't help being stupid. It's that that's so amazing. You can't help being kind to them--they're so stupid." "If ye didn't do that, what should ye do?" James inquired. "I shouldn't do anything unless I was forced," said she. "I don't want to do anything, except enjoy myself--read, play the piano, pay visits, and have plenty of _really_ nice clothes. Why should I want to do anything? I can tell you this--if I didn't need the money I'd never go inside that school again, or any other!" She was heated. "Dun ye mean to say," he asked, with an ineffable intonation, "that Susan and that there young farmer have gone gadding off to Canada and left you all alone with nothing?" "Of course they haven't," said Helen. "Why, mother is the most generous old thing you can possibly imagine. She's left all her own income to me." "How much?" "Well, it comes to rather over thirty shillings a week." "And can't a single woman live on thirty shillings a _wik_? Bless us! I don't spend thirty shillings a wik myself." Helen raised her chin. "A single woman can live on thirty shillings a week," she said. "But what about her frocks?" "Well, what about her frocks?" he repeated. "Well," she said, "I like frocks. It just happens that I can't do without frocks. It's just frocks that I work for; I spend nearly all I earn on them." And her eyes, descending, seemed to say: "Look at the present example." "Seventy pounds a year on ye clothes! Ye're not serious, lass?" She looked at him coldly. "I am serious," she said.