How Dear Is Life Read Online Free Page A

for £ 450 Domestic Goods, and £ 850 the brick built and slated house. Mr. Howlett was only a Gentleman. Mr. Howlett had also made out his own policy.
    However, Mr. Hollis had a very distinguished father-in-law .Mr. Hollis had told him that he was Carl ton Turnham, the famous civil engineer who had been responsible for the new kind of sewerage plant of a big town in Surrey, a new and epoch-making design. The effluent, said Mr. Hollis, was spread over six hundred acres of specially planted rye-grass. The area was divided so that the grass was fertilised one year, and left for hay the next. The bumper hay crop every year paid most of the urban district council’s sanitary department’s wages. “There’s economy for you, and a useful distribution of waste products!” Phillip was duly impressed.
    Very important men, he learned from Mr. Hollis, had offices in the Lane. They were Household Names in sugar, tea, and coffee. Had he been to see the Cloth Hall? Then he should. The Corn Exchange in Mark Lane, nearby, was worth visiting, too. All the corn that fed London and the barleys that supplied the great breweries passed through a few hands there, in samples only of course, he said. At times Mr. Hollis was almost an enthusiastic as Gran’pa and Mother were, about the City. Fancy preferring that sort of thing to birds and fish! He dared to say so, one day. Mr. Hollis looked at him intently.
    “I yield to no one in my love of Outdoors, my young would-be Waterton, but do you realize that in the City, in which you are privileged to earn your bread and butter, nearly three quarters of a million workers run almost the entire country? Think a moment what that means, my lad! Approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand toiling souls—less you and Edgar over there, of course—Edgar, get on with your work!—seriously, Maddison, it is a fact that approximately three-quarters of a million people, all more or less experts in the various branches of commerce, banking, and insurance, arrive in this square mile every morning, and depart again in the afternoon, more rather than less to the suburbs, most of them—again excepting you and Edgar—stop grinning, Edgar!—as I was saying, seriously, Maddison—all joking apart—what the hell are you smirking at?—shipping clerks, insurance men, typists, shop-keepers, bank-clerks, and many other decent and respectable people with inherited skills and techniques of a thousand years—since the Romans left, in fact, and the Danes and Saxons were absorbed, and one of my ancestors, Baron Holies—spelt with an ‘e’ and not an ‘i’, according to the family records—Ah, hullo, Thistlethwaite! And a good day to you, too!”
    Phillip was beginning to recognise many of the regular callers. Mr. Thistlethwaite was one of them. He was a Broker. He always wore a top hat, an old-fashioned frock coat, and new-fashioned dark-pearl button boots with fawn cloth sides. Mr. Thistlethwaite had a very big moustache, which looked as though it had been waxed at one time, but the wax had never been properly washed out. Mr. Thistlethwaite always greeted Mr. Hollis in a loud, hearty voice, which dropped, as though it belonged to a bass-viol, to a gutty sort of grumble as Mr. Thistlethwaite leaned over Mr. Hollis’ desk and recounted his grievance against the Metropolitan Insurance Company, which had dismissed him, for some reason or other, Phillip gathered, with an offer of six months salary as an ex gratia payment. Mr. Thistlethwaite, who had started an agency in Crutched Friars, was going to fight them, he said. What did Hollis think?
    Mr. Hollis demurred. He said that he was not really competent to give advice. But he knew all about the case, insisted Mr. Thistlethwaite. It was rather complicated, said Mr. Hollis. Anyway, he wished him good luck. Phillip signed a receipt for a new £ 2,400 Domestic policy, made out to an Esquire, and waited quietly to give it to the tall top-hatted figure, who took it