I have always understood that it is an unwritten law for an itinerant char to be offered tea, and secretly I hoped my employer would observe the tradition. Vain illusion, absurd expectancy! Such a thought never occurred to her. It would doubtless have been, from her point of view, a serious violation of the social code. Her husband, I think, must have been a bank clerk, or, possibly, in the insurance world, and people were tabulated carefully in their estimation. There are, as I discovered, very many women just like this. They are quite unmoved by the hunger or misfortune of a fellow woman, unless she be of their own class. Outside their particular little preserve misfortune does not exist. She told me that would do for the day and offered me ninepence. As a good trades unionist, I demanded the market rate of a shilling.