“I know it and, besides, I can’t help it.” She was winking hard again against two fresh tears. “I spoiled two cakes this afternoon. Elice tried to show me how to make them; and I burned my finger”—she held up a swaddled member for inspection—“horribly. I just can’t do this housework, Harry, just simply can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Once more the two teary recruits vanished by the former method. “You can do anything.”
The girl shook her head with a determination premeditated.
“No; I repeat that I’ve tried, and it’s been a miserable failure. I—think we’ll have to have the maid back again, for good.”
“The maid!” Randall laughed, but not so 114 spontaneously as was normal. “We don’t want a maid bothering around, Margery. We want to be alone.” He had a brilliant thought, speedily reduced to action. “How could I treat injured fingers like this properly if there was a maid about?”
“There wouldn’t be any burned fingers then,” refuted the girl. Intentionally avoiding the other’s look, she arose from the neglected dinner-table decisively and, the man following slowly, led the way to the living-room. “Joking aside,” she continued as she dropped into a convenient seat, “I mean it, seriously. I’ve felt this way for a long time, and to-day has been the climax. I simply won’t spend my life cooking and dusting and—and washing dishes. Life’s too short.”
From out the depths of the big davenport Harry Randall inspected steadily the rebellious little woman opposite. He did not answer at once, it was not his way; but he was thinking seriously. To say that the present moment was a surprise would be false. For long, straws had indicated the trend of the wind, and he was not blind. There was an excuse for the attitude, too. He was just enough to realize that. As she had said, she was born differently, bred 115 differently, educated to a life of ease. And he, Harry Randall, had known it from the first, knew it when he married her. Just now, to be sure, he was financially flat, several months ahead of his meagre salary; but that did not alter the original premise, the original obligation. He remembered this now as he looked at her, remembered and decided—the only way it seemed to him possible an honorable man could decide.
“Very well, Margery,” he said gravely, “you may have the maid back, of course, if you wish it. I had hoped we might get along for a time, while we were paying for the things in the house, anyway; but”—he looked away—“I guess we’ll manage it somehow.”
“Somehow!” Margery glanced at him with only partial comprehension. “Is it really as bad as that, as hopeless?”
Randall smiled the slow smile that made his smooth face seem fairly boyish.