"Oh I can fancy scenes in which you'd be quite natural." And
indeed I could see the slipshod re-arrangements of stale
properties--the stories I tried to produce pictures for without the
exasperation of reading them--whose sandy tracts the good lady
might help to people. But I had to return to the fact that--for
this sort of work--the daily mechanical grind--I was already
equipped: the people I was working with wore fully adequate.

"We only thought we might be more like SOME characters," said Mrs.
Monarch mildly, getting up.

Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim
wistfulness that was touching in so fine a man. "Wouldn't it be
rather a pull sometimes to have--a--to haven?" He hung fire; he
wanted me to help him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldn't--I
didn't know. So he brought it out awkwardly: "The REAL thing; a
gentleman, you know, or a lady." I was quite ready to give a
general assent--I admitted that there was a great deal in that.
This encouraged Major Monarch to say, following up his appeal with
an unacted gulp: "It's awfully hard--we've tried everything." The
gulp was communicative; it proved too much for his wife. Before I
knew it Mrs. Monarch had dropped again upon a divan and burst into
tears. Her husband sat down beside her, holding one of her hands;
whereupon she quickly dried her eyes with the other, while I felt
embarrassed as she looked up at me. "There isn't a confounded job
I haven't applied for--waited for--prayed for. You can fancy we'd
be pretty bad first. Secretaryships and that sort of thing? You
might as well ask for a peerage. I'd be ANYTHING--I'm strong; a
messenger or a coalheaver. I'd put on a gold-laced cap and open
carriage-doors in front of the haberdasher's; I'd hang about a