"Dick always thinks in terms of bread-and-butter, Miss Tennant," she said sneeringly.

"But money means little enough to any one with my poor health.

Beyond procuring me a few alleviations, there is nothing it can do for me." Sara was privately of the opinion that it had done a good deal for her.
Looking round the luxuriously furnished room with its blazing fire, and then at Mrs.Selwyn herself, elegantly clad in a rest-gown of rich silk, she could better understand the poverty-stricken appearance of the rest of the house, Dick's shabby clothes, and his willingness to receive a paying guest whose contribution towards the housekeeping might augment his slender income.
Here, then, was where his hard-earned guineas went--to keep in luxury this petulant, complaining woman whose entire thoughts were centred about her own bodily comfort, and whom Patrick Lovell, with his lucid recognition of values, would have contemptuously described as "a parasite woman, m'dear--the kind of female I've no use for." "Oh, Dick"-- Mrs.Selwyn had been turning over the pages of a price-list that was lying on her knee--"I see the World's Store have just brought out a new kind of adjustable reading-table.

It's a much lighter make than the one I have.

I think I should find it easier to use." Selwyn's face clouded.
"How much does it cost, dear ?" he asked nervously.