Frowning at her own reflection in the glass, deeply in earnest, she tried to puzzle it out.
"In the old times, when women had big estates to look after," she presently pursued, "servants, horses, cows, vegetables and fruit gardens, soap-making and weaving and chickens and babies, they had real responsibilities, they had real interests. Housekeeping to-day isn't interesting. It's confining, and it's monotonous. But take it away, and what is a woman going to do?"
"That," her husband answered seriously, "is the real problem of the day, I truly believe. That is what you women have to discover. Delegating your housekeeping, how are you going to use your energies, and find the work you want to do in the world? How are you going to manage the questions of being obliged to work at home, and to suit your hours to yourself, and to really express yourselves, and at the same time get done some of the work of the world that is waiting for women to do."
His wife continued to eye him expectantly.
"Well, how?" said she.
"I don't know. I'm asking you!" he answered pointedly. Mrs. Salisbury sighed.
"Dear me, I do get so tired of this talk of efficiency, and women's work in the world!" she said. "I wish one might feel it was enough to live along quietly, busy with dressmaking, or perhaps now and then making a fancy dessert for guests, giving little teas and card parties, and making calls. It—" a yearning admiration rang in her voice, "it seems such a dignified, pleasant ideal to live up to!" she said.
"Well, it looks as if we had seen the last of that particular type of woman," her husband said cheerfully. "Or at least it looks as if that woman would find her own level, deliberately separate herself from her more ambitious sisters, who want to develop higher arts than that of mere housekeeping."
"And how do YOU happen to know so much about it, Kane?"
"I? Oh, it's in the air, I guess," the man admitted. "The whole idea is changing. A man used to be ashamed of the idea of his wife working. Now men tell you with pride that their wives paint or write or bind books—Bates' wife makes loads of money designing toys, and Mrs. Brewster is consulting physician on a hospital staff. Mary Shotwell—she was a trained nurse—what was it she did?"