in the sympathetic way? Worse still, what if she could
_not_ laugh, but looked wretchedly embarrassed, confused, shamed? That
would be a crisis it needed some philosophy to contemplate.

For the present, common sense made it rigorously plain to him that the
less he thought of these things, the better. He had not a penny to
spare. Only by exercising an economy which in the old days would have
appalled him, could he send his mother and sister an annual sum just
sufficient to their needs. He who scorned and loathed all kinds of
parsimony had learnt to cut down his expenditure at every possible
point. He still smoked his pipe; he bought newspapers; he granted
himself an excursion, of the cheapest, on fine Sundays; but these
surely were necessities of life. In food and clothing and the common
expenses of a civilised man, he pinched remorselessly; there was no
choice. His lodgings cost him very little; but Mrs. Wick, whose
profound suspiciousness was allied with unperfect honesty, now and then
made paltry overcharges in her bill, and he was angry with himself for
his want of courage to resist them. It meant only a shilling or two,
but retail trade had taught him the importance of shillings. He had to
remind himself that, if he was poor, his landlady was poorer still, and
that in cheating him she did but follow the traditions of her class. To
debate an excess of sixpence for paraffin, of ninepence for bacon,
would have made him flush and grind his teeth for hours afterwards; but
he noticed the effect upon himself of the new habit of
niggardliness--how it disposed him to acerbity of temper. No matter how
pure the motive, a man cannot devote his days to squeezing out
pecuniary profits without some moral detriment. Formerly this woman,
Mrs. Wick, with her gimlet eyes, and her leech lips, with her spyings
and eavesdroppings, with her sour civility, her stinted discharge of
obligations, her pilferings and mendacities, would have rather amused
than annoyed him. "Poor creature, isn't it a miserable as well as a
sordid life. Let her have her pickings, however illegitimate, and much
good may they do her." Now he too often found himself regarding her
with something like animosity, whereby, to be sure, he brought himself
to the woman's level. Was it not a struggle between him and her for a
share of life's poorest comforts? When he looked at it in that light,
his cheeks were hot.

A tradesman must harden himself. Why, in the early month