Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth), 1879-1971 / 2008-10-04 00:00:00

She liked "a civil tradesman" immensely;
she liked a civil charwoman immensely; and she liked a civil workman
immensely. It gave her as much pleasure, real pleasure that she felt in
all her emotions, to receive civility from the classes that ministered
to her class--servants, tradespeople, gardeners, carpenters, plumbers,
postmen, policemen--as to meet any one in her own class. It never
occurred to her to reckon up how enormously varied was the class whose
happy fortune it was to minister to her class and she would not have
been in the remotest degree interested if any one had told her how
numerous the class was. It never occurred to her that any of these
people had homes and it never occurred to her that the whole of the
lower classes lived without any margin at all beyond keeping their homes
together, or that if they stopped working they lost their homes, or that
they looked forward to nothing beyond their working years because there
was nothing beyond their working years for them to look forward to. Nor
would it have interested her in the remotest degree to hear this. The
only fact she knew about the lower classes was that they were
disgustingly extravagant and spent every penny they earned. The woman
across the Green who did her washing had six children and a husband who
was an agricultural labourer and earned eighteen and sixpence a week.
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