From the first days of their marriage, she ran her husband badly into debt; and things had got slowly worse with the years.

Mrs.Hooper was the most wasteful of managers; servants came and went interminably; and while money oozed away, there was neither comfort nor luxury to show for it.
As the girls grew up, they learnt to dread the sound of the front doorbell, which so often meant an angry tradesman; and Ewen Hooper, now that he was turning grey, lived amid a perpetual series of mean annoyances with which he was never meant to cope, and which he was now beginning to hand over, helplessly, to his younger daughter Nora, the one member of the family who showed some power to deal with them.
The situation had been almost acute, when Lord Risborough died.

But there was a legacy in his will for Ewen Hooper which had given a breathing space; and Connie had readily consented to pay a year's maintenance in advance.

Yet still the drawer of bills, on which Nora kept anxious watch, was painfully full; and of late the perennial difficulty of ready money had reappeared.
Mrs.Hooper declared she must have a new dress, if these invitations were to be accepted.
"I don't want anything extravagant," she said fretfully.

"But really it's too bad of Nora to say that I could have my old blue one done up.
She never seems to care how her mother looks.