“My dear fellow,” returned St. John, “you don’t seem to quite realise our position. We belong to the working-class, and will have to hunt out cheap rooms when we get there.”
“Ah! Well, diggings are more convenient in many ways, and more private, too.” And Mr Markham, raising his wineglass to his lips, drained it quickly, as though he were swallowing something beside Heidsieck, as no doubt he was.
Chapter Twelve.
Cheap apartments are not easily obtainable at watering places in the summer, that is apartments which combine cheapness with a certain amount of comfort. It was Jill who pointed out the likeliest locality to search in, and who finally discovered what they wanted after many fruitless enquiries. They did not suit St. John’s taste, however much they might his pocket. He would have pronounced them impossible at once had not Jill firmly maintained that they would do. She had had to study economy so much all her life that she was easily pleased, and really considered the rooms quite good enough for what they required.
“They are,” she observed cheerfully as soon as they were alone together, “clean and comfortable. To me, after my old attic, they are more—they are luxurious. And the air is perfectly delightful.”
St. John glanced round the tiny sitting-room with its cheap saddle-bag suite, and uncompromisingly hard sofa, and endeavoured to see things from her point of view, but with no very marked success. He was losing sight of the romance of poverty, in the realisation of its sordidness. He hated cheap lodgings and all their attendant discomforts, and his dissatisfaction was written plainly on his face.
“It might have been worse,” he answered disparagingly.
Jill bit her lip and turned to look out of the window. He followed her example, and his discontent increased.