was near—in the small house a secret conversation was most difficult—and she had noticed little economies they practised, and not because of parsimony. The two were getting old, there were fewer and fewer calls every year now for their services. Younger and more progressive people were gobbling the bulk of the catering jobs. Their older customers they yet retained, but some of these were dying off and others entertained less, for they too were getting old. Their sons and daughters who now had their own homes went to the established firms where newer and fresher and more bizarre effects could be obtained than those of the old order furnished by the Mannings.
Having always been thrifty, the Mannings had saved some money, but they knew and Mimi knew that they would need all of this in the years to come when even the little work they now did would be gone and they would be too old to do any work at all. Mimi was miserable when she thought of this and she seemed to herself to be a leech feeding off the bodies of these two who had been so generous to her, a stranger.