I should say that, on an average you might call it two important hours
regularly thrown away. "And a good job, too," perhaps our fathers,
husbands, and brothers would say. But, then, you see, they are
Philistines and do not understand.

But though we suffer somewhat at the hands of these shop people, I
think in their turn they have to endure a great deal more from their
customers. I have seen old ladies order nearly the whole shop out,
turn over the articles, and having entirely exhausted the patience of
their victims, say, "Yes--all very pretty--but I don't think I will
buy any to-day, thank you," and they move off to other counters to
enact the same scene over again. Selfish old things!

I was dreadfully hard up a short time ago, and of course my bills were
ten times as big as usual. I had no money coming in, and could not
conceive how I was to meet my debts.

It is astonishing, when you come to try it, how few paths there are
open for poverty-stricken ladies to make a little money, especially
when your object is to keep your difficulties a secret from your
mankind. I tried every imaginable way without success. What is the
good of having an expensive education, of being taught French and
German--neither of which languages, by the way, when brought to the
test, a girl can ever talk, or at any rate so as to be understood.
What is the good of it all, I say, when you want to turn your hand to
making a little money? I felt quite angry the other day when, our cook
being ill, we had a woman in to take her place. Fifteen shillings a
week she made! She, who had had little or nothing spent on her
education, could yet make more shillings in a week than I could pence!
I began to wish I had been brought up as a scullery maid.