By supper that night she had recovered, and remembered her breakdown rather as a bad dream, but neither that evening nor the next day could she quite shake off the feeling of strangeness and depression.  She had never imagined that she would like town life, but she had thought that the unpleasantness of living in streets would be lost in the companionship of the man she loved—­and she was disappointed to find that this was not so.  Bertie, indeed, rather added to than took away from her uneasiness.  He did not seem to fit into the Hill household any better than she did—­in fact, none of the members fitted.  Bertie and Agatha clashed openly, and Mrs. Hill was lost.  The house was like a broken machine, full of disconnected parts, which rattled and fell about.  Joanna was used to family quarrels, but she was not used to family disunion—­moreover, though she would have allowed much between brother and sister, she had certain very definite notions as to the respect due to a mother.  Both Bertie and Agatha were continually suppressing and finding fault with Mrs. Hill, and of the two Bertie was the worst offender.  Joanna could not excuse him, even to her own all-too-ready heart.  The only thing she could say was that it was most likely Mrs. Hill’s own fault—­her not having raised him properly.

Every day he went off to his office in Fetter Lane, leaving Joanna to the unrelieved society of his mother, for which he apologised profusely.  Indeed, she found her days a little dreary, for the old lady was not entertaining, and she dared not go about much by herself in so metropolitan a place as Lewisham.  Every morning she and her future mother-in-law went out shopping—­that is to say they bought half-pounds and quarter-pounds of various commodities which Joanna at Ansdore would have laid in by the bushel and the hundredweight.  They would buy tea at one grocer’s, and then walk down two streets to buy cocoa from another, because he sold it cheaper than the shop where they had bought the tea.  The late Mr. Hill had left his widow very badly off—­indeed she could not have lived at all except for what her children gave her out of their salaries.  To her dismay, Joanna discovered that while Agatha, in spite of silk stockings and Merry Widow hats, gave her mother a pound out of the weekly thirty shillings she earned as a typist, Albert gave her only ten shillings a week—­his bare expenses.

“He says he doesn’t see why he should pay more for living at home than he’d pay in digs—­though, as a matter of fact I don’t know anyone who’d take him for as little as that, even for only bed and breakfast.”

“But what does he do with the rest of the money?”

“Oh, he has a lot of expenses, my dear—­belongs to all sorts of grand clubs, and goes abroad every year with the Polytechnic, or even Cook’s.  Besides, he has lady friends that he takes about—­used to, I should say, for, of course, he’s done with all that now—­but he was always the boy for taking ladies out—­and never would demean himself to anything less than a Corner House.”