I should say that
here she has advantages over some, as I belong to the class of husband
known as Easily Fed. She has got hold of a whole sheaf of leaflets from the
War Office or somewhere--"When is a pie not a pie?" "Leave out the egg;"
"How to make something out of something else," etc., etc.; and we feed on
those chiefly. She knows I don't like rabbits, and yet I am well aware that
rabbits are repeatedly insinuated in such forms as not to leave a single
clue. I cannot tell you how I admire and approve. Still it makes me
thoughtful sometimes.
No doubt you will believe that we are being drawn together by sharing these
hardships. Well, yes. In a way. And yet I don't feel easy about it. We are
quite in sympathy, but there is a difference in our point of view. Mine, I
affirm, is the nobler. I economize, although I loathe it; while she, I am
convinced, is beginning to like it. I don't mean to say that she does it on
purpose, but that phrase may give you an idea what I mean. I sometimes
wonder wistfully if the hand that put that ugly new steel contraption at
the back of the fire to save the coal is really the hand that I wooed and
won ten years ago. I see in her the steady growth of an implacable
conscience. In moments of depression I have a horrid feeling that she
always wanted to do this sort of thing and never got a real chance till
now.
We were extraordinarily happy before the War. We were not at all hard up
and we had no compunctions about spending money.
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