“‘Economic value!’” cried Jeannette. “What do you mean? The mother of five children has an economic value of ten dollars a week! Why, Alice, you talk like a crazy woman!”
“I may be worth a great deal more than that to the nation, but that’s all I’d be worth to a business man.”
“The Government ought to give you an annual income the rest of your life for every child you bring into the world; that would represent your economic value!”
“Well, there’s no likelihood of their doing it,” laughed Alice. “I wish I had a definite way of earning money,—I mean a profession like a stenographer or a nurse. I’ve always claimed, Janny, that every woman, married or single, ought to learn a trade or profession. You have no idea how I envy you, sometimes. You’re independent, you’re beholden to no one, you’re utterly free of all these cares and responsibilities that harass me from morning to night.”
Jeannette shook her head emphatically.
“You don’t know, Alice,” she said. “If you envy me my life, I envy you a hundred times more. I envy you these very cares and responsibilities of which you complain; I envy you your husband and your children and all those things that go to make a home.... Oh, I think sometimes, I was a blithering fool to have left Martin!”
His name had not crossed her lips for months, and for a little time there was silence on the porch.
“Do you ever hear from him?” asked Alice in a lower key.
“No. I understand he’s in Philadelphia in the automobile business. You know as much about him as I do.”
“And he’s never married?”