"That depends upon who they are, Mr. Yorke."
"Well, I mean--I don't mind telling you in confidence--me and another. A wife, for instance."
Had Roland said Me and a Kangaroo, Mrs. Jones could not have looked at him with more surprise--albeit not one to be surprised in general.
"I'd like to take her from there, for she's shamefully tyrannized over. We need not mention names, but you guess I dare say who's meant, and you are not to go and repeat it to the parish. If I could get my pay increased to three or four times what it is, by dint of doing extra work and putting my shoulder to the wheel in earnest; and if she could get a couple of nice morning pupils at about fifty pounds apiece, that would make three hundred a year. Now don't you think, Mrs. Jenkins, we might get along with that?"
"Well--yes," answered Mrs. Jones, speaking with some hesitation, and rather to satisfy the earnest, eager face waiting for her decision, than in accordance with her true belief. "The worst of it is that prospects rarely turn out as they are expected to."
"Now what do you mean, Mrs. J.? Three hundred a-year is three hundred a-year. Let us be on the safe side, if you like, and put it down at two hundred: which would be allowing for my present pay being only doubled. Do you mean to say two people could not live on two hundred a-year? I know we could; she and I."
"Two people might, when both are economically inclined. But then you see, Mr. Yorke, one ought always to allow for interruptions."
"What interruptions?" demanded Roland.
"Sickness. Or pay of pupils falling off."
"We are both as healthy as ever we can be," said Roland, heartily. "If I had not been strong and sound as a young lion, should I have stood all that knocking about at Port Natal? As to pay and pupils, we might take care to make them sure."