From a window at the back of the fat red house behind him Mrs. Foster was also doing a little surveying. She was a tepid, pale-haired little woman, and she knitted a good deal, persistently and quite unnecessarily. She was not one of Mr. Foster’s successes. It was not that Mrs. Foster was not patient, for she was; it was not that she had not made Mr. Foster a good wife, for she had begun to live with him nearly thirty years ago and was still doing so, nor had she yet ever committed suicide; she even endured his talk without screaming violently or running for the nearest razor. And yet she was not a success. She had not worn very well, it is true, but that was not enough to justify these harsh words; her once pretty hair was now lankly nondescript, her face a little flaccid, and her eyes very weary and resigned. She looked, in fact, not unlike a disillusioned mouse; but even the most disillusioned of mice will show signs of emotion before cheese or cats. Mrs. Foster never showed signs of any emotion at all. Mr. Foster was only too well aware that his Agatha was not one of his successes, and it distressed him very much. He could not understand it. Here they were, risen from a little house in Balham to something very like a mansion in the country, with Mr. Foster retired from business into the position of rustic gentleman, and Agatha seemed no more excited about it than she had been over the burnt sausages that morning at breakfast. And the rise was really all the more remarkable when one reflected that the Fosters ought never to have been in Balham at all, for it is much easier to rise out of one’s real class than into it. Mr. Foster had been at one of the minor public schools, and Agatha was actually related to a Duke. The connection between the families was not a very recent one perhaps, nor a very close one, but it was quite indisputable. A stranger seldom had converse with Mr. Foster very long before finding these two facts insinuated into his knowledge. And yet Agatha was not a success. It really was very remarkable. Mr. Foster never troubled to speculate about his wife’s views on this disappointing subject, because really, what would be the use? One did not want to think unkindly of Agatha, but one might just as well speculate about the views of a piece of dough as the cook puts it into the oven. Mr. Foster was in the habit of putting it more tactfully in his own mind by reflecting that Mrs. Foster simply never happened to hold views.