Eve began to answer the advertisements in one or two daily papers, and to spend a few shillings in advertising on her own account. The results were not encouraging. It seemed to be a meaner world than she had imagined it to be, for people wanted to buy her body and soul for less than was paid to an ordinary cook. In fact, a servant girl was an autocrat, a gentlewoman a slave. She rebelled. She refused to be sweated—refused it with passion. She advertised herself as willing to give painting lessons, but nothing came of it, save that one of her advertisements happened to catch Mr. Parfit’s eyes. Sister Jane had called, and her brother had taken Eve twice to a theatre, and once to a concert. He dared to question her solicitously about the ways and means of life. “How are you getting along, you know? Don’t mind me, I’m only everybody’s uncle.” She did not tell him the worst. “I can’t quite get the thing I want.” “How many people are doing what they want to?” “Not many.” “One in a hundred. I wanted to be a farmer, and I’m stuck on a stool. We grumble and grouse, but we have to put on the harness. Life’s like that!” She was looking thin and ill, and he had noticed it. “Wait a bit. Seems to me I shall have to play the inquiring father. You’re not playing the milk and bun game, are you?” “Sometimes.” He looked indignant, yet sympathetic. “That’s just what you women do, mess up your digestions with jam and tea and cake. A doctor told me once that he had seen dozens of girls on the edge of scurvy. You must feed properly.” “I get all I want.” His kindly, emotional nature burst into flame. “Now, Miss Carfax, you’ve just got to tell me if you’re wanting any sympathy, sympathy of the solid sort, I mean. Don’t stand on ceremony. I’m a man before I’m a ceremony.” She found herself flushing. “Thank you so much. I understand. I will tell you if I ever want to be helped.” “Promise.” “Yes.” “That’s a dear, good girl.” Mrs. Buss’s prophetic pessimism was justified by the event. Raw weather, leaky shoes and poor food may have helped in the overthrow, but early in March Eve caught influenzal pneumonia. The whole house was overturned. A trained nurse followed the doctor, and the nurse had to be provided with a bed, Mr. Albert Buss being reduced to sleeping on a sitting-room sofa. His mother’s grumbling now found a more ready echo in him. What was the use of making oneself uncomfortable for the benefit of a nurse who was plain and past thirty, and not worth meeting on the stairs? Mrs. Buss grumbled at the extra housework and the additional cooking. “Just my luck. Didn’t I say she’d get ill? She’ll have to pay me more a week for doing for the nurse and having my house turned upside down.”