“I do!” her companion returned. Then both were silent for a few thoughtful moments and wore the air of people who have introduced a subject upon which they are not yet quite warm enough to speak plainly. Mrs. Cromwell evidently decided to slide away from it, for the time being, at least. “I don’t think Amelia’s looking well,” she said. “She’s rather lost her looks these last few years, I’m afraid. She seems pretty worn and thin to me;—she’s getting a kind of skimpy look.”
“What else could you expect? She’s made herself the man’s slave ever since they were married. She was his valet, his cook, and his washerwoman night and day for years. I wonder how many times actually and literally she’s blacked his boots for him! How could you expect her not to get worn out and skimpy-looking?”
“Oh, I know,” Mrs. Cromwell admitted;—“but all that was in their struggling days, and she certainly doesn’t need to do such things now. I hear he has twenty or thirty houses to build this year, and just lately an immense contract for two new office buildings. Besides, he’s generous with her; she dresses well enough nowadays.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Dodge said, grimly. “They’d both see to that for his credit; but if he comes in with wet feet you needn’t tell me she doesn’t get down on her knees before him and take off his shoes herself. I know her! Yes, and I know him, too! Rich or poor, she’d be his valet and errand girl just the same as she always was.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Cromwell. “But it seems to me her most important office for him is the one she’s just been filling.”
“Press agent? I should say so! She may stop blacking his boots, but she’ll never stop that. It’s just why she makes me so confounded tired, too! She thinks she’s the only woman that ever got married!”
“Amelia is rather that way,” the other said, musingly. “She certainly never seems to realize that any of the rest of us have husbands of our own.”
“ ‘Mr. Battle can’t be comprehended from knowing other men!’ ” Here Mrs. Dodge somewhat bitterly mimicked the unfortunate Amelia’s eager voice. “ ‘Other men look at things in simply a masculine way!’ ‘I know how hard it must be for other women to understand a god like my husband just from knowing their own poor little imitation husbands!’ ”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Cromwell protested. “She didn’t quite say that.”
“But isn’t it what she meant? Isn’t it exactly what she felt?”