"My Lord, no. No longer than they are willing to. Most of them find it easier to lie down. You've got too much brains to be sentimental, Catherine Hammond."
"What do you think, Bill?" Catherine appealed to him suddenly. She felt him, in his motionless silence, probing, inspecting, and never saying what he saw.
"It is for you to decide," he answered.
"You know you can't get advice out of Bill! It's a wonder he ever can serve on an engineering commission." Henrietta laughed at him, in friendly, appreciative amusement. "He has to offer technical advice there. He won't give any other kind."
"You won't consider my specifications?" Catherine was a trifle piteous, under her light tone. "Even if I need—well, it is rebuilding, isn't it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across, to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak.
"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job. Most men would."
"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to interfere with him. His career is just starting—and brilliantly. It wouldn't be right to bother him."
"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children, didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash, and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning more scrubbing than the man!"
"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?"