Not for her were mediaeval castles, even those that are specially
described as small. Not for her the shores in April of the
Mediterranean, and the wisteria and sunshine. Such delights were only
for the rich. Yet the advertisement had been addressed to persons who
appreciate these things, so that it had been, anyhow addressed too to
her, for she certainly appreciated them; more than anybody knew; more
than she had ever told. But she was poor. In the whole world she
possessed of her very own only ninety pounds, saved from year to year,
put by carefully pound by pound, out of her dress allowance. She had
scraped this sum together at the suggestion of her husband as a shield
and refuge against a rainy day. Her dress allowance, given her by her
father, was £100 a year, so that Mrs. Wilkins's clothes were what her
husband, urging her to save, called modest and becoming, and her
acquaintance to each other, when they spoke of her at all, which was
seldom for she was very negligible, called a perfect sight.

Mr. Wilkins, a solicitor, encouraged thrift, except that branch
of it which got into his food. He did not call that thrift, he called
it bad housekeeping. But for the thrift which, like moth, penetrated
into Mrs. Wilkins's clothes and spoilt them, he had much praise. "You
never know," he said, "when there will be a rainy day, and you may be
very glad to find you have a nest-egg. Indeed we both may."

Looking out of the club window into Shaftesbury Avenue--hers was
an economical club, but convenient for Hampstead, where she lived, and
for Shoolbred's, where she shopped--Mrs. Wilkins, having stood there
some time very drearily, her mind's eye on the Mediterranean in April,
and the wisteria, and the enviable opportunities of the rich, while her
bodily eye watched the really extremely horrible sooty rain falling
steadily on the hurrying umbrellas and splashing omnibuses, suddenly