“Yes, mama. Now I’m settled.”
Hildegarde took the seat opposite her mother and silently applied the seersucker patch. While Mr. Mar, behind the screen of a much-hunched shoulder, copied with infinite care the “eye-sore” map, Mrs. Mar knitting all the while at lightning speed, rolled out the German uninterruptedly, till a ring at the bell was followed by sounds of Mrs. Cox being shown into the parlor.
Mrs. Mar had known no one so well in Valdivia all these years as Mrs. Elihu Cox. Mrs. Elihu was considered “a very bright woman,” and it was no doubt so, since even Mrs. Mar did not demur at her renown. They met seldom, outside of church, the Shakspere Club, or the Mission Society, yet each had admitted things to the other that neither had admitted to any one else. Even to-day, when there was definite business to arrange, they talked of other matters than the vacant secretaryship. They presented each other with views upon domestic service, education, and husbands.
“I left Mr. Cox supremely happy,” said his spouse, in that tone of humorous scorn by which many women try to readjust the balance between the sexes. “Yes, supremely happy, clearing out his desk. He does it once a month. Nothing Mr. Cox does brings him so near absolute bliss, except wandering about the place with a hammer and nails.”
Both women smiled at the inveterate childishness of the lords of creation.
And then, on a sudden, Mrs. Cox was grave. One might laugh at the odd ways of men with any woman. It is the universal bond that binds the sex together; the fine lady feels it no less when she condoles with her washer-woman upon a stay-at-home husband,—“Yes, yes, a man in the house all day is dreadfully in the way,”—and their identity of sentiment bridges the difference in fortune. But Mrs. Mar was one with whom you might not only laugh over the foibles of the opposite sex, you might even be grave with her on the same ground—a rarer privilege to the educated woman.
“That monthly orgy, that’s such unalloyed delight to Mr. Cox, used to be a time of great interest to me, too,” admitted Mrs. Cox.
“Really!” The president of the Valdivia Shakspere Society could hardly believe it of her friend.
“Yes. You see, there’s always a great clearance made—a general getting rid of all sorts of accumulations. I used to watch every time when he came to the lower left-hand drawer—” Mrs. Cox smiled faintly as one pitiful of some long-past pain.