"True. That's where the honest poor have the advantage of us. You see,
we're the dishonest poor. We've been to the same schools and
universities and we talk the same idiom and we have the same manners and
like the same things as people who spend more in a month or a week than
we spend in a year. And we pretend, and they pretend, that they and we
are exactly the same. We aren't, you know. We're one vast pretence. Has
it occurred to you, lady, that we've never possessed a motor-car and
most certainly never shall possess one? Yet look at the hundreds of
thousands of cars in London alone! And not a single one of them ours!
This detail may have escaped you."

"I wish you wouldn't be silly, Arthur."

"I am not silly. On the contrary, my real opinion is that I'm the wisest
man you ever met in your life--not excepting your son It remains that
we're a pretence. A pretence resembles a bladder. It may burst. We
probably shall burst. Still, we have one great advantage over the honest
poor, who sometimes have no income at all; and also over the rich, who
never can tell how big their incomes are going to be. _We know exactly
where we are_. We know to the nearest sixpence."

"I don't see that that helps us. I consider the Government has treated
you shamefully. I wonder you important men in the Treasury haven't
formed a Trade Union before now."

"Oh, Eve! After all you've said about Trade Unions this last year! You
shock me! We shall never he properly treated until we do form a Trade
Union. But we shall never form a Trade Union, because we're too proud.
And we'd sooner see our children starve than yield in our pride. That's
a fact."