“Why should it? Fools’ money for a fool’s tale. What do you expect? I suppose donkeys think that there is nothing on earth like a donkey’s braying!”
“All the same, it helps my argument, that these people are slaves, only capable of swallowing just what is given them.”
“I dare say you are right. We ought to change a lot of this in the next fifty years!”
“I wonder. You see, he taught me a good deal, in the country, about growth and evolution, and all that has come from the work of Mendel, De Vries and Bates. He doesn’t believe in London. He called it an orchid house, and said he preferred a few wholesome and indigenous weeds.”
“All the more reason for believing that this sort of London won’t last. We shall get something better.”
“We may do, if we can get rid of some of the politicians.”
It was about this time that Eve began to realise the limitations of her present life, and to look towards a very problematical future. It seemed more than probable that “means to the end” would absorb all her energies, and that the end itself would never arrive. She found that her hack work was growing more and more supreme, and that she had no leisure for her own art. She felt tired at night, and on Saturdays she was more tempted to go to a theatre than to sit at home in Bosnia Road and try to produce pictures. Sundays, too, became sterile. She stayed in bed till ten, and when she had had breakfast she found the suburban atmosphere weighing upon her spirits. Church bells rang; decorous people in Sunday clothes passed her window on their way to church or chapel. If she went for a walk she everywhere met a suggestion of respectable relaxation that dominated her energies and sent her home depressed and cynical. As for the afternoons, they were spoilt for her by Mr. Albert Buss’s banjo, though how his genteel mother reconciled herself to banjo-playing on a Sunday Eve could not imagine. Three or four friends joined him. Eve saw them saunter in at the gate, with dandy canes, soft hats, and an air of raw doggishness. They usually stared hard at her window. The walls and floors were thin, and Eve could hear much that they said, especially when Mrs. Buss went out for her afternoon walk, and left the “nuts” together. They talked about horse-racing and girls.
“She’s a little bit of all right!”
“You bet!”
“Ain’t afraid to go home in the dark!”