“Why do you object?”
“The thought of it makes me unhappy.”
“But it doesn’t make you unhappy to think of me cooking your dinner and attending to your children?”
This remark set him thinking.
He pondered the question during the whole of his tram journey to Brooklyn.
When he came home in the evening, he had done a good deal of thinking.
“Now, listen to me, my love,” he began, “I’ve thought a lot about your position in the house and, of course, I am far from wishing that you should be my servant. I think the best thing to do is this: You must look upon me as your boarder and I’ll pay for myself. Then you’ll be mistress in the house, and I’ll pay you for my dinner.”
“What do you mean?” asked his wife, a little uneasy.
“What I say. Let’s pretend that you keep a boarding-house and that I’m your boarder. We’ll only pretend it, of course.”
“Very well! And what are you going to pay me?”