“What a shame!”
“What, to do it well?”
“You know what I mean, you wicked mother. A shame to let all that mental ability go to waste, while the pots and pans are being scoured. It doesn’t take brains to do housework.”
“Doesn’t it!” sighed Mrs. Grafton; “I find, all the time, that it takes much more than I possess. When it comes to the problems of how to let down Cecilia’s tucks without showing, how to vary the steak-chops diet that we grow so tired of, and how to decrease the gas-bills, I feel my mental inferiority. I’m glad that you have come home with new ideas; we need them, dear.”
A voice rose from the foot of the stairs below,—a shrill soprano voice, that skipped the scale from C to C, and back again to A.
“That’s Ellen,” said Mrs. Grafton, laying down her sewing with a sigh. “I can’t teach her to come to me when she wants me. She says that she doesn’t mind messages if she can ‘holler ’em,’ but she ‘won’t climb stairs fer Mrs. Roosevelt herself.’ I suppose I’ll have to go down.”
“What does she want?”
“That’s what makes it interesting: you never know. Perhaps an ironing-sheet, or the key to the fruit-closet. Maybe the plumber has come, or the milkman is to be paid, or the telephone is ringing. Or possibly a book-agent has made his appearance. She always keeps it a mystery until I get down.”
“I don’t see how on earth you live in that way. I never could get anything done.”