“Yes, indeed, Harry. Perhaps I think how shabby and faded the crimson window-curtain begins to look, and I find I can afford to buy a new one. Then I consider that the new window-curtain will make the old carpet look very bad, and I find I cannot have that without pinching. Besides, the new carpet would entail the expense of a new rug; and then the fluted silk of the cabinet piano must be renewed; and, after all, how little it would add to the expense to have new chintz for the sofa and chairs! Thus, expenses mount up—expenses I cannot afford.”
“So it ends in my not incurring any of them.”
“Your curtain looks very nice, though, Mrs. Cheerlove.”
“Well, I thought only such persons as mamma did those things.”
“There is no need they should be obtruded, Harry.”
“No, that’s what I’m always so afraid of.”
“Nor, if they happen to become known, is there any need to be ashamed.”
“Not always, I dare say, being young and thin-skinned; but the less you annoy yourself that way, the better. So you think I am better off than _you_?”
“O yes, with this nice quiet room. You may smile, Mrs. Cheerlove, but really it’s no joke, when a fellow wants to do a bit of writing, to have a parcel of children swarming about him, making all sorts of noises. It has such an effect sometimes on _me_, I know, that I am ready to declare the supreme good to be, a quiet room and leisure to use it.”
“Meanwhile, the high stool in the office—”
“May better be filled by some one else, ma’am.”
“‘Invoke the Muses, and improve your vein.’
“Ah, Harry, you betray your ignorance of your favourite craft! No; the line is Waller’s.”
Harry blushed, and said, “You laid a trap for me.”
“Not intentionally, I assure you. But my transition was rather abrupt. I was going to direct your attention to a favourite passage of mine in Coleridge’s works.”
“Pray do,” said Harry, rising alertly and going to the book-case.
“Bring me the second of those two small volumes, lettered ‘Biographia Literaria.’”
“Oh, it’s in prose!” said Harry, in disappointment.
“Prose by a poet, however—which, by-the-way, was the name of a pretty, though not very shining, little work by James Montgomery, that has now dropped out of sight. Here is the passage: it begins—‘Never pursue literature as a trade. With one exception’ (I think he means Southey) ‘I have never known an individual healthy or happy without some regular employment which does not depend on the will of the moment—’”