ged his shoulders.

"He!" he said. "How not like it!"

"I don't like it," she said. "I think it's a gloomy miserable hole.
I hate it. I've lived here all my life and seen everything bad
happen here. I hate it."

"Why?" he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.

"It's a bad job it isn't yours, for certain," he said, as they
entered the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and
butter.

"What?" said Miss Pinnegar sharply.

"The house," said Alvina.

"Oh well, we don't know. We'll hope for the best," replied Miss
Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather
tart, she added: "It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad
job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she _ought_ to have,
things would be very different, I assure you."

"Oh yes," said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.

"Very different indeed. If all the money hadn't been--lost--in the
way it has, Miss Houghton wouldn't be playing the piano, for one
thing, in a cinematograph show."

"No, perhaps not," said Ciccio.

"Certainly not. It's not the right thing for her to be doing, _at
all_!"

"You think not?" said Ciccio.

"Do you imagine it is?" said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on
him as he sat by the fire.

He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.

"He!" he said. "How do I know!"

"I should have thought it was obvious," said Miss Pinnegar.

"He!" he ejaculated, not fully understanding.

"But of course those that are used to nothing better can't see
anything but what they're used to," she said, rising and shaking the
crumbs from her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.

Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire
in the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from
the fire of the living-room.

"What do you want?" said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from
her hand.

"Big, hot fires, aren't they?" he said, as he lifted the burning
coals from the glowing mass of the grate.

"Enough," said Alvina. "Enough! We'll put it in the drawing-room."
He carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room,
and threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on
more pieces of coal.

"Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know
what they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can't
live without fire."

"But I thought it was always hot in Naples," said Alvina.