But anyhow, cramped and squalid and dingy though 9 Greville Street might be, it held security and peace.

“The Snuggery, that’s what we call it at fifty-one,” said Miss Clegson, who sometimes looked in to rally them.

Fifty-one was getting less of a snuggery than ever.  Fifty-one, Peter feared, was going down the hill.  The Berovieri goblet had made a little piece of level road for it, but that was soon over, and the descent began again.  Peggy, try as she would, could not make both ends meet.  Hilary, despise his job as he might, found it slipping from him more and more.  Week by week he seemed to earn a little less; week by week they seemed to spend a little more.  Peggy, as Hilary had frequently remarked, was not a good manager.  One or two of the boarders left, to seek more commodious quarters elsewhere.  More frequently, as the winter advanced, Peggy wailed, “Whatever is to become of us, dear only knows!  What with Larry drinking pints of cough-syrup, and Micky rolling in the gutter in his best suit, and Norah, the creature, letting the crockery fly about as if it was alive, and Hilary insisting on the table cloth being cleaner than it ever is, and the boarders having to have food they can eat, and now Lent’s coming on and half of them don’t take any notice of it but eat their joints just the same, bad manners to them for heretics.  Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear!”

Whenever Peter could spare any money he gave it to Peggy.  But his own fortunes were not exactly on the make.  He was not proving good at his job.  Recommended to his employers by Leslie, he had begun, of course, on a very small salary, to learn his trade; he hadn’t so far learnt enough of it to justify his promotion.  Every day he went through the same drudgery, with the same lack of intelligence,—­(it is odd how discernment and talent in one trade serve so little for another)—­and every week came home with the same meagre sum.

As far as he hated anything, he hated this work of his; long ago, had he been alone concerned, he would have dropped it, and taken to tramping the roads with boot-laces to sell, or some other equally unstrenuous and unlucrative avocation.  But he had not, from the first, been alone concerned; first he had had to help Hilary and Peggy, and now he had to keep a wife too.  Eventually there would probably be also children to keep; Peter didn’t know how much these cost, but vaguely believed them to be expensive luxuries.  So there seemed no prospect of his being able to renounce his trade, though there was a considerable prospect of its renouncing him, as he was from time to time informed.