Very few parents brace themselves to this endeavour, for it means not only effort but expense.

So the young folks swarm either to lodgings, or to marriage, and the pretence of home life.
Private lodgings for girls are dangerous and expensive, while public lodgings for youths are probably a shade worse.

So marriage it is, and boys of nineteen unite with girls one or two years younger.
I have no doubt that the future looks very rosy to the young couple whose united earnings may amount to as much as thirty shillings weekly, for it is an axiom of the poor that two can live cheaper than one.
It is so easy to pay a deposit on a single room, and so easy, so very easy, to purchase furniture on the hire system.

Does not the youth give his mother ten shillings weekly?
Why not give it to a wife?
Does not the girl contribute to her mother's exchequer?
Why may not she become a wife and spend her own earnings?
Both are heartily sick of their present home life, any change must be for the better! So marriage it is! But they have saved nothing, they are practically penniless beyond the current week's wages.

Never mind, they can get their wedding outfit on the pay weekly rule, the parson will marry them for nothing.