"One does hear complaints about them.

Unfortunately it is one of the few businesses managed entirely by women; and just now, in particular, if we were to say anything, it would be made use of by our enemies to injure the Cause." There was a summer years ago--it came back to Joan's mind--when she had shared lodgings with a girl chum at a crowded sea-side watering-place.
The rooms were shockingly dirty; and tired of dropping hints she determined one morning to clean them herself.

She climbed a chair and started on a row of shelves where lay the dust of ages.

It was a jerry- built house, and the result was that she brought the whole lot down about her head, together with a quarter of a hundred-weight of plaster.
"Yes, I thought you'd do some mischief," had commented the landlady, wearily.
It seemed typical.

A jerry-built world, apparently.