"Thanks. It will make things a good deal easier. I'm a reformed character. I hate not seeing my way, now."
The phrase struck Dick agreeably. It was what, with his cool robust sense, he regarded as the one thing necessary, if life was to be ordered on a satisfactory basis. He would have had no anxiety about money if his own income had been cut down to a pittance. He would have done without anything rather than forestall it by a week. He had expressed himself freely about Humphrey's insane blindness, as it seemed to him, in this respect; but now he seemed to have learnt his lesson, and Dick's feelings warmed towards him.
"How has it gone wrong?" he asked, with more interest than he had shown hitherto.
"It hasn't gone particularly wrong, lately. But we never seem to have a bob in hand; and it has meant doing without every sort of thing that one used to have as a matter of course."
"Oh, come now! Only the two of you! You ought not to have to go without much."
"I can only tell you that I've come to thinking twice before I take a taxi, and I've given up smoking cigars. It has to begin somewhere; but nothing seems to make any difference. Susan's housekeeping! But what can I do? I put it at so much; I asked people about it, and they said it was ample. But she seems to want double as much as anybody else for whatever she does. She says it must cost more because we chucked dining at restaurants, except occasionally. I don't know what it is. Money simply flows away in London, and you get nothing for it. I chucked a couple of clubs at the beginning of this year. Seems to me I've got to chuck everything if I'm to keep straight. And that's just what I'm going to do. It's been easier since we went up to Northamptonshire, although even there you'd think we inhabited a mansion by the housekeeping bills, instead of a little dog's hole of a place just big enough to hold us. Still, the main expense there is outside, and I've got that in hand."
"She must spend a tremendous lot on clothes."
"Well, to do her justice, she's clever at that, and I haven't had any trouble with her beastly dressmakers and milliners since that time two years ago. They were the devil then, of course. She has got hold of some cheap woman who turns her out extraordinarily well for very little. I wish she'd tackle other things as she does that. No, I'm not going to put all the blame on Susan. I really believe she's doing her best; but she doesn't seem to have it in her, except about her clothes. Anyhow, she's ready to do anything, and it shows that she's as worried about what has gone on, in her way, as I am, that she's so keen to go and live at Denny Croft. She's going to garden, and all the rest of it, and she swears she'll keep to half her dress allowance and put the rest into doing up the house."
"That's the way to go about it," said Dick. "She certainly does seem much keener on it than I should have thought she would have been. Virginia says so too. Let's hope it will last."
"It's going to," said Humphrey. "I'll see to that."