But here we are at the Dog's Home."
"Don't talk like that--it's unkind."
"I don't mean to be unkind, but I have to try to realise things before
I can appreciate them."
It seemed not a little incongruous that these two little spinsters
should pay for our dinners, and I tried to induce Doris to agree to
some modification in the present arrangements, but she said it was
their wish to entertain us.
The evening I spent in that hotel hearing Doris sing, and myself
talking literature to a company of about a dozen spinsters, all plain
and elderly, all trying to live upon incomes varying from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred pounds a year, comes up before my mind, every
incident. Life is full of incidents, only our intelligence is not
always sufficiently trained to perceive them; and the incident I am
about to mention was important in the life I am describing. Miss Tubbs
had asked me what wine I would drink. And in a moment of inadvertence
I said "Vin Ordinaire," forgetting that the two shillings the wine
would cost would probably mean that Miss Tubbs would very likely have
to go without her cup of tea at five o'clock next day in order that
her expenditure should not exceed her limit, and I thought how
difficult life must be on these slippery rocks, incomes of one hundred
and fifty a year.
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