volutions of the reasons why his
clients died, became insolvent, abandoned their projects, or otherwise
failed to come up to the scratch were followed by him alone in the full
of their maze-like windings. The house they inhabited, indeed, was one
of those he had designed for a client, but the 'fat chough' had refused
to go into it for some unaccountable reason; he and Eileen were only
perching there, however, on the edge of settling down in some more
permanent house when they came into their expectations.

Considering the vicissitudes and disappointments of their life together,
it was remarkable how certain they remained that they would at last
cross the bar and reach the harbour of comfortable circumstance. They
had, one may suppose, expectations in their blood. The germ of getting
'something for nothing' had infected their systems, so that, though they
were not selfish or greedy people, and well knew how to rough it, they
dreamed so of what they had not, that they continually got rid of what
they had in order to obtain more of it. If for example Ralph received an
order, he felt so strongly that this was the chance of his life if
properly grasped, that he would almost as a matter of course increase
and complicate the project till it became unworkable, or in his zeal
omit some vital calculation such as a rise in the price of bricks; nor
would anyone be more surprised than he at this, or more certain that all
connected with the matter had been 'fat choughs' except--himself. On
such occasions Eileen would get angry, but if anyone suggested that
Ralph had overreached himself, she would get still angrier. She was very
loyal, and fortunately rather flyaway both in mind and body; before long
she always joined him in his feeling that the whole transaction had been
just the usual 'skin-game' on the part of Providence to keep them out of
their expectations. It was the same in domestic life. If Ralph had to
eat a breakfast, which would be almost every morning, he had so many and
such imaginative ways of getting from it a better breakfast than was in
it, that he often remained on the edge of it, as it were. He had special
methods of cooking, so as to extract from everything a more than
ordinary flavour, and these took all the time that he would have to eat
the results in. Coffee he would make with a whole egg, shell and all,
stirred in; it had to be left on the hob for an incomparable time, and
he would start to catch his train wit