per annum that I should lose by leaving London, for I had never
possessed that sum, I calculated my real loss at something nearer 150
pounds, and this seemed not so terrible a thing. I had my forty pounds
a year for certain. I had the small earnings of my pen, and with
abundant time upon my hands I saw every reason why these should be
increased. Could I face a new kind of life upon an income of seventy
pounds per annum? Ah, how anxiously that problem was debated with my
wife, many a night when the children were abed! The natural
conservatism of woman had a great deal to say in these debates. 'It
was all very well,' said my wife, 'to do these little sums on paper,
but suppose the facts did not correspond? Suppose I found no cottage
at twenty pounds a year, and no decent school at sixpence a week? Then
the world was full of writers for the press.' (I frowned.) 'Not of
course like you, not half so good,' she added with a smile, 'but how do
you know that you will succeed? Show me a fixed income of 100 pounds a
year, and I would chance it, for I can live simply enough,' she would
say, 'and am as fond of liberty as you.'

She might have added what I knew to be true, that the penalties of
London life fell heavier upon her than me. I was not insensible to the
instantaneous lightening of spirits that happened with her when she was
able to forsake the abominable purlieus of the cellar-kitchen where her
life was spent; and although I knew not half her toils, nor half her
dejections and anxieties, which were sedulously kept from me, yet I was
not wholly blind. I had seen her too amid the roses of a cottage
garden flying the colour of long-forgotten roses in her cheeks; in the
hay-field shaking off a dozen years in as many hours; and although she
was always young to me, she never seemed so young and sweet as when we
walked a honeysuckled lane together. Her desire was with me I knew
well; she had no fear of poverty, and would have been content with