"Look here, darling," said Osborn. "How much'll food cost us? I don't know a great deal about these things, but if it's any standard to take—well, my old landlady used to give me rooms and breakfasts and dinners for thirty bob a week. Jolly good breakfasts and dinners they were, too!"
Marie murmured very slowly: "I'm not your old landlady." She imaged her, a working drab, saving, pinching, and making the best of all things. Compare Marie with Osborn's old landlady! "Besides," she murmured on, "there's me, too, now."
Osborn nodded. "Well," he said, "how much do you think?"
"Thirty shillings for both of us per week," said Marie, inclined to cry. "That's better than your old landlady."
Osborn hastened to soothe her. "Look here," he protested, "don't fuss over it, there's a love. Very well, I'll give you thirty bob a week, but that's seventy-eight pounds a year. My hat! I say, can't you squeeze the gas out of it?"
"I will get the gas out of it!" said Marie, with tightened lips.
"Great business!" said Osborn cheering; "put it down, darling."
So under the "Rent, forty pounds," she wrote, "Housekeeping, including gas, seventy-eight pounds."
"That's one hundred and eighteen pounds out of my two hundred," said Osborn, knitting his brows and staring into the fire.
"Coal?" whispered Marie, her pencil poised.