Miss Parker remarked timidly, when they were once more in the trap, jogging southwards on the hard boulevard, “You must be so awfully rich!”
Her friend smiled. “Yes. John has done remarkably well, and my money helped of course. But the house is really beyond us. That is the temptation out here, to discount the future, or at least to live up to the present to the last cent. And for the past six months the times have been so bad.” She looked grave.
“Don’t you find it all interesting and exciting, now you are married,—planning, and all that?”
“Oh, yes!” The married woman took the offered lead eagerly. “It has been such a full time. You see, I know almost all John’s business, and he has taken me with him on all his business trips, once to Alaska even, and I have felt like a real partner. I have managed some affairs here in the city all by myself.”
She talked rapidly, describing a few energetic and capable women in Chicago who managed large businesses. “It is so good to feel that you have a hand on the reins; aren’t merely driven along in a brougham, while you read a novel.”
“You must like it.” Miss Parker warmed sympathetically on finding a spot of enthusiasm. “Chicago and business must be so much more real than all that stuff in Paris.”
“I have liked it,” Mrs. Wilbur’s face sobered again, “while it was venture and struggle, and I had a hand in it. But, I should hate anything that came in between me and my husband, and just this active, free life.” Some passionate chord had been stirred.
“A woman loves and marries and has a large scheme to carry out. She plans living with her husband as an equal, and then—” She touched the horse quickly.
“What?” the girl asked curiously.
“Then she finds that their roads must divide. She must ‘make the home,’ cultivate persons whom it is well to know; even entertain horrid, stupid people because her husband’s interests are involved.”