ion 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 _a 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 L500 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 _entree_! 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 role--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 L150 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 upo