“When you come to see me, as I hope you will soon,” said my wife, sadly, as the joint appeared on the table, “I shall not be able to set roast veal before you, for I shall then no longer have a kitchen of my own.”
“I have the greatest respect imaginable for your roast joints,” I replied; “but it would never do to give up our ideals on such grounds. So far from there being any lack of roast joints in the future we shall have them even more frequently than hitherto, and many another delicacy in addition.”
“True enough,” she answered; “but we shall not enjoy these things together. One gets his meals here, another there. The distress caused to the individual heart by all this tearing asunder is poorly compensated for by knowing that the public at large live better. I don’t care a straw about the joint, but I do care about the social life of the family.”
“Ah, I see,” I said jocularly. “It is not for the sake of the pennyworth of cake, but only for the kind regards which accompany it. Never mind, old lady; rest assured we shall not have any the less regard for one another in the future, and we shall have more leisure to show it than we have had so far.”
“Well, I am sure of one thing,” she said. “I would a great deal rather work ten or twelve hours a day at home for you all, than eight hours for other people’s children, who are nothing to me.”
After a short silence, she asked, querulously:
“What I want to know is, why must things be so?”
And Agnes, who always seconds my wife when she gets on to such subjects, repeated the question even more querulously. Whenever these two talk a duet there is very little chance left for me, especially when Franz remains neutral, or, what is worse still, keeps nodding approval to Agnes.
“Have you then so entirely forgotten those delightful lectures by Miss W.,” I asked, “those lectures on the emancipation of women, and on the equality of women’s rights in all respects with the rights of men? You found those lectures at the time as inspiring as Bebel’s book.”
“Oh, Miss W. is an old maid,” they replied, “who has never had more than her one furnished room.”