They might have been just ordinary people.
PART II
HUBERT BRETT'S WIFE
CHAPTER V
ROUTINE
It was something of a career, Helena soon learnt, to be the wife of Hubert Brett.
Gradually, however, she got a grip of the rough lines of her whole duty. At first it had been difficult, for she was not methodical by nature; but now it all seemed natural, the ordinary thing. When you got into it, the day ran smoothly. She never even had to think by now. She had the housemaid's mind.
Everything in the little garden suburb home—for Hubert, capitulating to Kenneth Boyd all along the whole line, had settled out at Hampstead—every smallest detail was ordered to one end: the Work.
This, he reminded her so soon as they returned to England, was not just his pride or hobby: it was their existence. She had her three hundred pounds a year, which he wished her to keep, whilst his fixed income was a trifle less—his father had been that fatal sort of mongrel, half a cleric, half a City man—and for the rest they must depend upon his writing. How important then, but how essential, that he should be left free to do his very best.