Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/142

130 boarding-house or two, kept by workmen's wives. There are. several ladies in £25-£30 houses, who let apartments. The husband of one (we stayed with her till our house was ready) is a mechanic in the City, who comes home once or twice a week disguised as a business man; his wife lives in hourly dread of his real occupation becoming known in the village—and all the neighbours know it.

There are other ladies, in £30-£50 houses, who take in "paying guests." One, a widow with a small income, who might be comfortable in a cottage, but who has two grown daughters, who mustn't soil their hands, and must have accomplishments and genteel society, is struggling, with the assistance of "paying guests," to keep up an appearance in a big house. She had the bailiff in last week.

I came in touch with the bucolic element first. I was nearly a week rescuing my luggage from the Mudland Railway Company. The trouble is, I believe, that most of the trains are in such a hurry that they haven't always time to take in luggage, or, having got it aboard, they haven't time to put it out. Anyway, after waiting four days, one of the carriers (he was an intelligent type of workman) told me that my luggage was at the station. I inquired at the office, but they knew nothing about it; they told me that it might be over in the shed in the yard, so I went over there. In the shed I found a fresh-faced, unemotional youth, who wore an expression as if he were pondering deeply over a complete absence of ideas. There also seemed a something, as of resentment, in his