She got up now and walked to the kitchen door to gaze down on the paper.
“That’s a sample of the way we do business,” said Lester to her back. He wheeled himself over to the table and took out of a work-basket a pair of Stephen’s little stockings which he prepared to darn.
Mattie turned, saw what he was doing and pounced on him with shocked, peremptory benevolence. “Oh, Lester, let me do that! The idea of your darning stockings! It’s dreadful enough your having to do the housework!”
“Eva darned them a good many years,” he said, with some warmth, “and did the housework. Why shouldn’t I?” He looked at her hard and went on, “Do you know what you are saying to me, Mattie Farnham? You are telling me that you really think that home-making is a poor, mean, cheap job beneath the dignity of anybody who can do anything else.”
Mattie Farnham was for a moment helpless with shock over his attack. When she slowly rose to a comprehension of what he had said she shouted indignantly, “Lester Knapp, how dare you say such a thing! I never dreamed of having such an awful idea.” She brought out a formula again, but this time with heartfelt personal conviction, “Home-making is the noblest work anybody can do!”
“Why pity me then?” asked Lester with a grin, drawing his needle in and out of the little stocking.
“Well, but....” she said breathlessly, and was silent.
There was a pause. Then she asked meekly, climbing down with relief from the abstruse and unfamiliar abstract to the friendly concrete, “However in the world did you learn to darn, Lester?”
“Out of a book,” he told her tranquilly. “While I was still in bed I sent to the Library for any books they had on housekeeping. They sent me some corking ones—as good reading as ever I saw.”
“Why, I didn’t know they had books about housekeeping at the Library!” said Mattie, who was a great reader of novels.