name. The mismanagement of a brewery a hundred and fifty miles from
London; the failure of the British working-man to drink his customary
pints in several scattered scores of public-houses, had most
unaccountably knocked the bottom out of the Putney system of practical
philosophy. Putney posters were now merely disgusting, Putney trade
gross and futile, the tobacconist a narrow-minded and stupid bourgeois;
and so on.

Alice and he met on their doorstep, each in the act of pulling out a
latchkey.

"Oh!" she said, when they were inside, "it's done for! There's no
mistake--it's done for! We shan't get a penny this year, not one penny!
And he doesn't think there'll be anything next year either! And the
shares'll go down yet, he says. I never heard of such a thing in all my
life! Did you?"

He admitted sympathetically that he had not.

After she had been upstairs and come down again her mood suddenly
changed. "Well," she smiled, "whether we get anything or not, it's
tea-time. So we'll have tea. I've no patience with worrying. I said I
should make pastry after tea, and I will too. See if I don't!"

The tea was perhaps slightly more elaborate than usual.

After tea he heard her singing in the kitchen. And he was moved to go
and look at her. There she was, with her sleeves turned back, and a
large pinafore apron over her rich bosom, kneading flour. He would have
liked to approach her and kiss her. But he never could accomplish feats