“If I left The Journal I could get a fairly big salary on some other paper, perhaps.”
“And have your policy dictated by a lot of rotters! No indeed. We’ll stick to The Journal. It brought us all our luck. Something will happen. And of course I could live on lots less than Maud can. But I want my house even if it’s only a flat to have dignity too—not to be messy and frumpy. You want that too.”
“I don’t think that I want anything in the world except you and to give you everything I can.”
So they buried the difficulty in words and secretly Langley puzzled over his account books and secretly Horatia made budgets, strange and startling budgets, of household expenses with estimates of the cost of things reduced to minimums which would have shocked Maud or made her laugh. But even then——
The money part did not bother Horatia seriously. It was fun to puzzle and to plan. And for three weeks things ran smoothly. Then the housemaid was sent to the hospital one day for an operation for acute appendicitis, and for a few hours confusion reigned. Horatia, to whom the cook telephoned, left her work to Bob Brotherton and came home in haste. She encouraged the terrified housemaid and got her safely into the ambulance and engaged a nurse for her at the hospital. Then the cook went shakily back to her own work and Horatia started to put the children to bed. She had often done it before, but always before Ellen had laid things out for her and the nursery had been in order and the children fed. She found tonight a nursery in the wildest confusion, two cross children and no supper ready for them. She consulted Anna, the cook. Anna was but temperately helpful. She told Horatia what they had for supper and how to prepare the baby’s food but she did not suggest helping her. Horatia struggled with a maze of dishes, formulas and prohibitions and finally bore the tray up to the nursery. It was an hour and a half before she came down, but then the room was in order and the children in bed and quiet. Anna, who had kept dinner waiting for half an hour, did not seem especially coöperative. Now that the shock of Ellen’s illness was over and a call from the hospital reported her as resting easily, Anna seemed inclined to worry lest she be imposed upon. She told Horatia that Ellen always dressed the children at half-past seven and that she could not both get breakfast and dress them. Also she wondered if she could care for them during the day when Horatia was at the office. Horatia soothed her fears. Maud had left no instructions as to what to do in case one of the servants had appendicitis but Horatia guessed that the best thing was to engage a temporary housemaid. In the morning she promised Anna that should be done.
She was up early to dress and feed the children—but in spite of her early rising she found that she had to eat her own breakfast very hurriedly and then was late at the office because she had to go to three employment agencies. Rather discouraging places, the employment agencies. They showed her long waiting lists of their patrons but promised to do what they could. Horatia had no choice but to be content and so she went to the office and plunging into an exciting day forgot Maud’s household for a while.
But returning that night she was forced into the thick of domestic difficulty again. Anna was distinctly cross. The children were cross. There were many loose ends for Horatia to tie—many duties to perform which seemed especially wearying after her long day at the office.
“Domesticity needs a lot of oiling,” she told Jim.
He made things easy for her in the office but even with a great many things done for her there Horatia found both the office and the domestic burdens heavy. Savagely she spurned a little thought which crawled into her mind at times. “Of course I can manage my house and my work, when I am attacking my own problems. It’s only because this is something I am not used to, something that I have to carry out according to the plans which other people have made for me.” But none the less the thought crawled back again, suggesting that Maud had money and everything to make things easy for her and that even then the care of two children and a household was a heavy task when it was coupled with even eight hours of office work. She did not take that problem to Jim. It was hard to phrase and there seemed no very obvious way to solve it except by her own efforts. They wanted children and a home and she must work. She was doubly sure that she would want to work, especially when Anna’s complaints and the children’s restlessness were forgotten in the busy routine of the office—and yet there were times when just to get up in the morning and go to the office seemed too hard a strain. Suppose that after her marriage she should feel it too hard?
They could not find a new housemaid. The employment agencies seemed futile and advertisements, even in The Journal, brought such dilapidated creatures in answer that Horatia could not bear to entrust the children to them. For a few days they tried a trained nurse with whom Anna quarreled bitterly and who finally left because Anna insisted that she should make beds and do the dusting. Anna was continually on the defensive. After a visit to Ellen she felt it rather unfair that she should not have had an attack of appendicitis and have been sent to a pleasant hospital where her meals were brought to her on a tray and she was watched over by nurses. Ellen continued to get better. That was the bright spot. In a few weeks she would be as well as ever and in the meantime, if Anna would only stay, Horatia felt that she could manage. She refused to write Maud that she was having difficulties. Maud had counted on this trip and after all there was nothing very wrong.