[Footnote 87: A woman worker says, "They come back after they have married, because a girl who has been accustomed to make 18_s._ for herself is not comfortable when she marries a man on £2 a week who is accustomed to have that for himself, so she comes back to make extra money."] [Footnote 88: So also it is interesting to note the lingering shadow of chivalry in this connection. "Mr. ----," said one of the girls, "never will take married women, but then he is always _such_ a gentleman."] The average age of the women regularly employed is low,[89] because as a rule girls leave at marriage. The investigators generally report that the age in workrooms appears to be mainly between eighteen and twenty-three. The report that "Four girls here out of thirty or forty are over eighteen" (Leeds bookbinder's), is typical of many others. This fact alone has an enormous influence on women's wages and makes it necessary to be very careful in drawing conclusions under the headings dealt with in this chapter. [Footnote 89: A manager of a provincial printing establishment estimated that twelve years was the maximum workshop life of average girls.] [Sidenote: Wages and expenditure.] An attempt has been made to discover how far the earnings of women workers in these trades are only supplementary to family income, and how far the family worker is entirely dependent upon them for her livelihood. On the whole (but with important exceptions) they appear to be supplementary. In cases, certain fixed weekly payments are made for board and lodging to the relatives who are heads of the households, but these payments are not enforced in times of unemployment and are reduced when work is slack. Even when being made in full they do not always represent the actual cost of accommodation and living. It is becoming less and less common, it seems, for the wives of idle and improvident husbands to eke out their household income by casual or seasonal work, but the practice is still followed and in London prevails to a relatively considerable extent. In such cases the women do not work for mere pocket-money, nor again, do their wages cover the full cost of their living. "Miss ---- lives at home and her parents are evidently in comfortable circumstances," runs one report of a book-folder. "I went into the best parlour, where there was a piano--also a high hat in the corner!"