"'B. F.'?" repeated Aunt Milly.
"Before Ford," said Anne, laughing. "Oh, it was the thing for you, Auntie, you couldn't have brought up your own big family in a city apartment, to say nothing of stretching your wings to cover Little Orphant Annie, besides, everybody kept house when you were married!"
"And now nobody does, except a few Ancient Mariners?" inquired Cousin Dan.
Anne blushed. "Of course it suits some people, now," she amended, hastily. "Perhaps it's all right to keep house, if you have a big family, or lots of money and can hire all the fussing done."
"You don't need to hire fussing, if you've a big family," said Aunt Milly, her eyes twinkling behind the gold-bowed spectacles. "You'll keep on with the drawing—illustrating?"
"Surely," answered Anne. "Burt will keep right on being a lawyer."
"I see," said George. "Well, Queen Anne, I suppose when we want to visit you we can hire a room in the same block, I mean, hotel. I thought, perhaps, having so far conformed to the habits of us Philistines as to take a husband, you might go the whole figure and take a house!"
"Please!" begged Anne. In that tone, it was a catchword dating back to nursery days which the elf-like Anne had shared with a whole brood of sturdy cousins, and meant, "Please stop fooling; I want to be taken seriously."
"I love to draw—but my people don't look alive, somehow," said little Milly, wistfully.
Cried Anne: "Keep trying, Milly; there is nothing so lovely as to have even a taste for some sort of creative work, and to develop it; to express your own personality in something tangible, and to be encouraged to do so. Do understand me, Auntie and the rest; it isn't that I want to shirk, but I do want to specialize on what I do best! I'll wash dishes if it's ever necessary, but why must I wish a whole pantry on myself when either Burt or I could pay our proportionate share of a hotel dish-washer, or butler, or whatever is needed?"