The Lambournes stayed with the Clydes for a little while, then they and their baby and their nurse moved into a tiny house on the outskirts of a large neighbouring town, and then it was that such a number of people took to making use of the apt descriptive phrase first employed when Rita married. Many of them had known her in her girlhood, the spoilt and favoured child of Lady Clyde, at home in her stepfather’s house. They could fully appreciate the contrast with her present position. Richard could not find any work, although he answered advertisements and wrote to influential friends. He was not a strong man, and very soon showed signs of great discouragement and anxiety. Rita, on the contrary, was always cheerful, and discussed the situation very frankly, laughing merrily at her own struggle with unaccustomed privations. “It’s so lucky I’ve got a little money that my own father left me. By managing very, very carefully, we’re living on that. Poor Richard hadn’t a penny beyond his salary, and now of course that’s all gone--poor darling!” She was drolly confidential with her numerous friends. “It’s so funny to have to think before I take a second helping of pudding, even, and yet I suppose I really ought to. But I don’t think I’ve got a very large appetite, have I, Richard?” “No, you haven’t.” “What a good thing!” She laughed as she spoke, but Richard remained unsmiling and miserable, and gradually it became evident to Rita’s friends that one of Rita’s trials was her husband’s inability to face their position with a gallant laugh, as she did. As time went on, and there appeared to be no hope of a salary for Richard, she sent away the little girl’s nurse. “I think I ought to be able to manage. Lots of poor women have to, only it’s a great pity I was brought up to play the piano, and dance, and play tennis, instead of learning to cook. One somehow never thought of it’s being necessary.” “It oughtn’t to be necessary now,” said Richard violently, “if you’d married a fellow with money, or brains enough to make some.” “Why, I might have been a millionairess, if I’d married the first man that ever proposed to me,” she said brightly. “Doesn’t it seem odd?” He made no answer. “D’you know, darling, I saw a really lovely jumper in Colson’s window to-day. It was real old rose, the colour that suits me. It was one of the sale things and marked down to half a guinea. I had a frightful struggle--it is such ages since I had anything new. I wouldn’t even let myself go into the shop, though I had to get some things for baby. I went somewhere else. I felt I couldn’t bear to come out of Colson’s without that jumper. It was so lovely--and really marvellously cheap. It’s been haunting me ever since.” “Surely we can find half a guinea,” said Richard, his face flushing.