"True. That's where the honest poor have the advantage of us. You see, we're the dishonest poor. We've been to the same schools and universities and we talk the same idiom and we have the same manners and like the same things as people who spend more in a month or a week than we spend in a year. And we pretend, and they pretend, that they and we are exactly the same. We aren't, you know. We're one vast pretence. Has it occurred to you, lady, that we've never possessed a motor-car and most certainly never shall possess one? Yet look at the hundreds of thousands of cars in London alone! And not a single one of them ours! This detail may have escaped you." "I wish you wouldn't be silly, Arthur." "I am not silly. On the contrary, my real opinion is that I'm the wisest man you ever met in your life--not excepting your son. It remains that we're a pretence. A pretence resembles a bladder. It may burst. We probably shall burst. Still, we have one great advantage over the honest poor, who sometimes have no income at all; and also over the rich, who never can tell how big their incomes are going to be. _We know exactly where we are_. We know to the nearest sixpence." "I don't see that that helps us. I consider the Government has treated you shamefully. I wonder you important men in the Treasury haven't formed a Trade Union before now." "Oh, Eve! After all you've said about Trade Unions this last year! You shock me! We shall never he properly treated until we do form a Trade Union. But we shall never form a Trade Union, because we're too proud. And we'd sooner see our children starve than yield in our pride. That's a fact." "There's one thing--we can't move into a cheaper house." "No," Mr. Prohack concurred. "Because there isn't one." Years earlier Mr. Prohack had bought the long lease of his house from the old man who, according to the logical London system, had built the house upon somebody else's land on the condition that he paid rent for the land and in addition gave the house to the somebody else at the end of a certain period as a free gift. By a payment of twelve pounds per annum Mr. Prohack was safe for forty years yet and he calculated that in forty years the ownership of the house would be a matter of some indifference both to him and to his wife. "Well, as you're so desperately wise, perhaps you'll kindly tell me what we _are_ to do." "I might borrow money on my insurance policy--and speculate," said Mr. Prohack gravely. "Oh! Arthur! Do you really think you--" Marian showed a wild gleam of hope. "Or I might throw the money into the Serpentine," Mr. Prohack added. "Oh! Arthur! I could kill you. I never know how to take you." "No, you never do. That's the worst of a woman like you marrying a man like me."