“Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me.”
Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way of taking it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of cold meat and hot potatoes and warmed-up pudding.
“But whatever you do,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar; “whatever you do, and however you strive, in this life, you’re knocked down in the end. You’re always knocked down.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina, “if it’s only in the end. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had your life.”
“You’ve never had your life, till you’re dead,” said Miss Pinnegar. “And if you work and strive, you’ve a right to the fruits of your work.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina laconically, “so long as you’ve enjoyed working and striving.”
But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it was useless to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the less, she also felt as if she had been knocked down. And she almost envied poor Miss Pinnegar the prospect of a little, day-by-day haberdashery shop in Tamworth. Her own problem seemed so much more menacing. “Answer or die,” said the Sphinx of fate. Miss Pinnegar could answer her own fate according to its question. She could say “haberdashery shop,” and her sphinx would recognize this answer as true to nature, and would be satisfied. But every individual has his own, or her own fate, and her own sphinx. Alvina’s sphinx was an old, deep thoroughbred, she would take no mongrel answers. And her thoroughbred teeth were long and sharp. To Alvina, the last of the fantastic but pure-bred race of Houghton, the problem of her fate was terribly abstruse.
The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer fate with whatever came into one’s head. No good striving with fate. Trust to a lucky shot, or take the consequences.
“Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “Have we any money in hand?”
“There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It’s all shown in my books,” said Miss Pinnegar.