"Then how are they to qualify?"
"That's the novices' affair. You can't expect people to pay incompetence when skilled labour is loafing at the street corners."
"I expect nothing," she answered; "my expectations are all dead and buried. We've only a certain capacity for expectation, I think; under favourable conditions it wears well and we say, 'While there's life there's hope;' but; when it's strained too much, it gives out."
"And you drift without a fight in you?"
"A woman can't do more than fight till she's beaten."
"She shouldn't acknowledge to being beaten."
"Theory!" she said between her teeth; "the breakfast-tray is fact!"
"What do you reckon is going to become of; you?"
"I don't anticipate at all."
"Oh, that's all rubbish! Answer straight!"