“Don’t be so unkind, Edith,” said her husband, with an expression of pain. Her remark had hurt him, and, although she realized it, she somehow refused to admit to herself that she regretted it.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Surely you realize that I am doing the best I can,” he replied slowly. “I can’t do any more.”
“Well, suppose I do. Does that make it any easier?”
She felt angry and annoyed, first with Donald because he seemed unable to realize how barren her life with him was, and then with herself because she had allowed herself to become involved in this useless discussion. Donald, she knew, would always be the same. It was hopeless to expect him to change, or to try, by argument, to make him do so.
“Are you angry because I couldn’t afford to get you that new hat for Easter?” he asked, as he began to refill his pipe.
This falling back upon man’s universal belief that a woman’s happiness or unhappiness depends solely upon her clothes annoyed her still further.
“Don’t talk like a fool, Donald,” she exclaimed, throwing down her sewing angrily. “I’m tired, that’s all. For eight years I’ve darned stockings, collected trading stamps, done my own housework, and tried to imagine that the hats I’ve trimmed myself looked as though they came straight from Paris. When a woman has done that for eight years, she has a right to be tired.”
“But, Edith, it will not always be that way. You know how I am working for the future.”
Mrs. Rogers picked up her sewing and resumed her air of patient resignation. “The future is a long way off. When it comes, if it ever does, I shall probably be so old that I won’t care what sort of hats I wear.”