He was, however, aware of the future risks of the situation when he asked in marriage a girl without fortune, and he told me without reserve what we had to expect.
An important portion of his income was to cease after fourteen years--the end of the lease of a coal-mine; but he felt certain that he would be able by that time to replace it by his own earnings, and meanwhile we were to live so economically and so simply that, as we thought, there was no need for anxiety; so we convinced my parents--with the persuasion that love lent us--that after all we should not be badly off.
Soon after the completion of our household organization, however, I began to fear that a very simple way of living might, under peculiar conditions, become expensive. A breakfast consisting of ham and eggs is not extravagantly luxurious, but if the ham comes to thrice the original price when carriage and spoilage are allowed for, and if to the sixpence paid for half-a-dozen eggs you add the wages of a man for as many hours, you find to your dismay that though your repast was simple, it was not particularly cheap. Whichever way we turned we met with unavoidable and unlooked-for expenses. Perhaps an English lady, accustomed to the possibilities of such a place, and to the habits of the servants and the customs of the country, might have managed better--though even to-day I don't see clearly what she could have done; as for me, though I had been brought up in the belief that Paris was one of the most expensive places to live in, and though I was perfectly aware of its prices,--having kept my father's house for some years, on account of my mother's weak state of health,--I was entirely taken by surprise, and rather afraid of the reckoning at the end of the year. No one who has not attempted that kind of primitive existence has any idea of its complications. A mere change of servant was expensive--and such changes were rather frequent, on account of their disgust at the breach of orthodox habits, and the lack of followers; or their dismissal was rendered inevitable by their incapacity or unwillingness, or their contempt for everything out of their own country. We had a capital instance of this characteristic in a nurse who came from Greenock, and who thoroughly despised everything in the Highlands. One night, my husband and myself were out of doors admiring a splendid full moon, by the light of which it was quite easy to read. The nurse Katharine was standing by us, holding baby in her arms, and she heard me express my admiration: unable to put up with praises of a Highland moon, she exclaimed deliberately, "Sure, ma'am, then, you should see the Greenock moon; this is nothing to it."