"I think I should like it, and mother would like it too. You know she has fifty pounds a year of her own, and if what Mr. Graham says is right we shall be able to live very comfortably."
"I can't say I like this writing for a living," he said.
"I suppose we cannot have everything as we like it. And, besides, I do like it. It is congenial work, and it makes me feel independent."
"It is not always good for women to be independent. It is dangerous."
She laughed—a pleasant little rallying laugh.
"I hope you will not be shocked," she said. "I have set my heart on being perfectly independent of you and everybody else."
He saw that she would have her way, and let the subject drop.
A few weeks afterwards, Lettice and her mother had packed up their belongings and went to London. The Grahams were delighted to have them, for Lettice was a great favorite with both. James Graham was a literary man of good standing, who, in addition to editing The Decade, wrote for one of the weekly papers, and reviewed books in his special lines for one of the dailies. By dint of hard work, and carefully nursing his connection, he contrived to make a living; and that was all. Literary work is not well paid as a rule. There is fair pay to be had on the staff of the best daily papers, but that kind of work requires a special aptitude. It requires, in particular, a supple and indifferent mind, ready to take its cue from other people, with the art of representing things from day to day not exactly as they are, but as an editor or paymaster wants them to appear. If we suffered our journalists to sign their articles, they would probably write better, with more self-respect and a higher sense of responsibility; they would become stronger in themselves, and would be more influential with their readers. As it is, few men with vigorous and original minds can endure beyond a year or two of political leader-writing.
Graham had tried it, and the ordeal was too difficult for him. Now he had a greater scope for his abilities, and less money for his pains.
Clara Graham was the daughter of a solicitor in Angleford, and had known Lettice Campion from childhood. She was a pretty woman, thoroughly good-hearted, with tastes and powers somewhat in advance of her education. Perhaps she stood a little in awe of Lettice, and wondered occasionally whether her husband considered a woman who knew Latin and Greek, and wrote clever articles in The Decade, superior to one who had no such accomplishments, though she might be prettier, and the mother of his children, and even the darner of his stockings. But Clara was not without wits, so she did not propound questions of that sort to her husband; she reserved them for her own torment, and then expiated her jealousy by being kinder to Lettice than ever.