“Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself.”
“If you have to get it yourself I'll allow for seven-thirty,” said he, trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it. “Now don't take it so hard, Ellie. You are a first-class architect, anyhow—one can't be everything. We'll get another girl in time. This is just the common lot out here. All the women have the same trouble.”
“Most women seem better able to meet it!” she burst forth. “It's not my trade! I'm willing to work, I like to work, but I can't bear housework! I can't seem to learn it at all! And the servants will not do it properly!”
“Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them! But cheer up, dear. It's no killing matter. Order by phone, don't forget the ice, and I'll try to get home early and help. Don't cry, dear girl, I love you, even if you aren't a good cook! And you love me, don't you?”
He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once more. She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to the table. The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing with flies, hot, with a week's accumulating disorder. The bread she made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans; perhaps sour already. She clapped it into the oven and turned on the heat.
Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room. Turning swiftly she shut the door on them. The dining-room was nearly as bad. She began to put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing the dining-room door behind her.
She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising anger kept the tears back.
“Of course I love him!” she said to herself aloud but softly, remembering the baby, “And no doubt he loves me! I'm glad to be his wife! I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him! But—this is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He hasn't had to change his business!”
She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.
“'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and you get married—and after that it's Housework!”