"You come to a poor part of London," said Miss Sutton; "and I am not going to say but that the poverty is deserved, part of it, at all events. There was Thomas Mitchell, aged twenty-three, getting good wages as a journeyman printer. There was Mary Rowles, parlour-maid at the West-end, costing her mistress at the rate of fifty pounds a year, aged twenty-one. Because they could keep themselves comfortably they thought they could keep ten children on Thomas's wages. So they got married, and found they could not do it, not even when the ten was reduced to eight. Because a gentleman can keep himself comfortably on a hundred and fifty pounds a year, does he try to keep a wife and ten children on it?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Mrs. Rowles, thinking that she ought to say something, and yet not knowing what to say.
"Oh, no, no," murmured Mary Mitchell.
"Of course not," pursued Miss Sutton. "He says, 'What I have is only enough to keep myself, so I had better not marry.' Do you know why I have not married?"
"No, miss," replied Mrs. Mitchell, getting to work again on the mantle.
"Because the man I liked had not enough to keep a wife and family; he looked before he leaped. He never leaped at all; he never even proposed to me point-blank, but it came round to me through a friend. But you working-people, you never look, and you always leap, and when you have got your ten children and nothing to feed them on, then you think that the gentlefolks who would not marry because they had not enough to keep families on, are to stint and starve themselves to keep your families. Does that seem fair?"
Mrs. Mitchell stitched away; the others did not reply.
Miss Sutton went on: "If I had ten children, or even two children, I could not afford to give you what I do." Here she put down a half-crown on the table. "Now, listen to a plan I have in my head. You know, Mrs. Mitchell, what we West-end ladies have to pay for our mantles, even the plainest and simplest we can get; two guineas and a half, and upwards to any price you like to name. You also know what you receive for making them."
"Yes, miss, I do;" and Mrs. Mitchell shook her head.
"How much is it?"