"A fine place," said Mr. Humphreys admiringly.
"Yes, it's rather decent," she drawled; "they do one very well here. A club is one of the necessaries of life."
"I suppose so." He was remembering the way her tea had been served in the boarding-house. "Wealth buys more in the old country than over there—you get more for your money than I do."
"Do you have to rough it very badly?" Her tone was gentler. "Are you still in the same place?"
"Well, I haven't known I was roughing it of recent years, but I don't see luxury like this in Manitoba. Not bad. And I've got a gramophone. Pretty rotten records, I'm afraid. Verdi is about the most classical of them."
"Isn't it lovely, how Verdi reminds one?" she said. "If I hear Verdi, I'm about ten years old again, and—it's funny—I'm always in the same bow window, and it's always a summer's afternoon, though I suppose the organs used to come in the winter, too. Just as, if I hear that hymn with 'pilgrims of the night' in it, it's always the nursery, and the gas over the mantelpiece is lighted. Verdi gives me my childhood back. I hope to hear Verdi in heaven. You've nothing very dreadful to complain of, then? You aren't sorry you went?"
"Well, no—I'm glad I went. It has panned out all right. It has been a funny thing to walk down the Strand again and remember that the last time I was in it I was short of sixpences. The other day I looked in at the office where I used to clerk. Two of the boys I had known were there still—grown round-shouldered and pigeon-chested. I suppose they've had a rise of about fifty pounds a year in the meantime. They came round to dinner at the hotel last night, and it made me melancholy to hear them talk. I used to want them to chuck the office and go out to Canada with me—they'd got the stamina once—but they hadn't got the grit. Now it's too late.... You know, it's capital to see you flourishing like this! You're about the only survivor of the old days that it hasn't given me the hump to meet. You always were sure you'd get on, weren't you?"
"I was," she said. "Yes, I used to say so."
"Do you remember the people in that house? And how we used to groan about the extras in the bills?"
"It was a bad time for us both," she stammered.