eau, and
went on, more mildly: "If you can do better than Justine, it may or may
not be worth your while to take that out of her hands; but, if you
can't, it seems to me sheer folly. My Lord, Sally--"

"Yes, I know! I know," Mrs. Salisbury said hastily. "But, really,
Kane," she went on slowly, the color coming into her face, "let us
suppose that every family had a graduate cook, who marketed and
managed. And let us suppose the children, like ours, out of the
nursery. Then just what share of her own household responsibility IS a
woman supposed to take?

"You are eternally saying, not about me, but about other men's wives,
that women to-day have too much leisure as it is. But, with a Justine,
why, I could go off to clubs and card parties every day! I'd know that
the house was clean, the meals as good and as nourishing as could be;
I'd know that guests would be well cared for and that bills would be
paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a house, supposed to do more than
that? I don't want to be a mere figurehead."

Frowning at her own reflection in the glass, deeply in earnest, she
tried to puzzle it out.

"In the old times, when women had big estates to look after," she
presently pursued, "servants, horses, cows, vegetables and fruit
gardens, soap-making and weaving and chickens and babies, they had real
responsibilities, they had real interests. Housekeeping to-day isn't
interesting. It's confining, and it's monotonous. But take it away, and
what is a woman going to do?"

"That," her husband answered seriously, "is the real problem of the
day, I truly believe. That is what you women have to discover.
Delegating your housekeeping, how are you going to use your energies,
and find the work you want to do in the world? How are you going to
manage the questions of being obliged to work at home, and to suit your
hours to yourself, and to really express yourselves, and at the same
time get done some of the work of the world that is waiting for women
to do."

His wife continued to eye him expectantly.

"Well, how?" said she.

"I don't know. I'm asking you!" he answered pointedly. Mrs. Salisbury
sighed.

"Dear me, I do get so tired of this talk of efficiency, and women's
work in the world!" she said. "I wish one might feel it was enough to
live along quietly, busy with dressmaking, or perhaps now and then
making a fancy dessert for guests, giving little teas and card parties,
and making calls. It--" a yearning admirat