"Gerald," she said, "we shall simply have to manage on a hundred a year."
But the curate shook his head.
"Dearest, I should be an utter cad if I allowed you to do such a thing," he said. "A hundred a year is less than two pounds a week!"
"A lot of people live on less than two pounds a week," Eileen pointed out longingly.
"Yes; I know. If we could rent a three-shilling cottage and I could go about with a spotted handkerchief round my neck, and you could scrub the doorsteps coram populo, we might be very comfortable; but the clergy belong to the black-coated class, and people in the lower ranks of the black-coated class are the poorest people in the whole wide world. They have to spend money on luxuries—collars and charwomen, and so on—which a workingman can spend entirely on necessities. It wouldn't merely mean no pretty dresses and a lot of hard work for you, Eileen. It would mean starvation! Believe me—I know! Some of my friends have tried it—and I know!"
"What happened to them?" asked Eileen fearfully.
"They all had to come down in the end—some soon, some late, but all in time—to taking parish relief."
"Parish relief?"
"Yes; not official, regulation, rate-aided charity, but the infinitely more humiliating charity of their well-to-do neighbors—quiet checks, second-hand dresses, and things like that. No, little girl; you and I are too proud—too proud of the cloth—for that. We will never give a handle to the people who are always waiting to have a fling at the improvident clergy—not if it breaks our hearts, we won't!"
"You are quite right, dear," said Eileen quietly. "We must wait."