After the ladies had returned to the drawing-room (for even in this New Light house the stupid fashion remains of gentlemen lingering alone, or together, or however you like it--you know what I mean--over their wine) I made a little tour of inspection of the public parts of the establishment with Mrs. Malise. They've a common library and reading-room, and most of the associates have their individual sitting-rooms. Dinner is a fixed meal, and all the members meet thereat, but breakfast and lunch may be taken at any time within certain hours, to suit the convenience of each member. "We are too small in number to make it possible to order our meals _à la carte_, or to economize in general living expenses as it might suit us individually to do. We can only reduce household costs in the mass, and then share these pretty equally. But this is only a beginning. By and by we shall have splendid confederate homes, under whose roofs the simplest and the costliest fashions of living may go on side by side. But to prove so much as we have done is a gain, and in separate homes the same amount of comfort we have here would cost us at least double, and would be, for some of us who have neither time nor talent for domesticity, quite unattainable at any price. What, under my administration, a little home would be upon our income of £500 a year, I shouldn't like to experience. And Mrs. Stainton! (The little widow.) Why, she comes of one of the oldest of the county families in Somerset; was reared like an exotic, lived chiefly upon cream and forced fruit, though now and then she trifled with something solid--an almond soup, a clear jelly, a bit of game, or an intricate _entrée_! Never dreamed of going beyond their pleasure gardens on her own feet, and knew how to do no earthly thing save to read, write, talk. She read 'Alton Locke,' and by way of comment married a national schoolmaster, the son of a brickmaker on her father's estate! There was a grand hubbub, and before she'd had time to be too much disgusted with her martyr rôle--martyrdom to break down the barriers of caste--her husband left her a penniless widow, and since then her father allows her a small income, but sentences her to banishment from that decorous household whose proprieties she outraged. She can endure nothing, knows nothing of any practical matters. What would she do with £150 a year, in a dingy parlor 'let,' with a flock bed, a burnt chop, a long-brewed cup of tea, and a frowsy-haired, smutty-faced 'slavey' to open the door and attend grudgingly and slatternly upon her? "But we are not all chiefly moved by economic considerations. Some of our members have very considerable incomes, and might live where and how they pleased, but they seem not less satisfied with our experiment than are the poorer associates. There is such relief from care, and we may see as much or as little society as we choose without offence or burden."