eath and birth occupy women far more than is the case
with men, to whom political and mercantile speculations are more
congenial. With immediate buying and selling, and all the absolute
forms of exchange and barter, women are deeply engaged, so that the
realities of trade are often more intelligent to them than to many
merchants. If men understood domestic economy half as well as women
do, then their political economy and their entire consequent
statecraft would not be the futile muddle which it is.

It was all very interesting to Mary, and, moreover, she had a great
desire for companionship at the moment. If she had been left alone it
might have become necessary to confront certain thoughts, memories,
pictures, from which she had a dim idea it would be wise to keep her
distance. Her work on the previous day, the girl she had met in the
house, the policeman--from all or any of these recollections she
swerved mentally. She steadily rejected all impressions that touched
upon these. The policeman floated vaguely on her consciousness not as
a desirable person, not even as a person but as a distance, as an
hour of her childhood, as a half-forgotten quaintness, a memory which
it would be better should never be revived. Indeed her faint thought
shadowed him as a person who was dead, and would never again be
visible to her anywhere. So, resolutely, she let him drop down into
her mind to some uncomfortable oubliette from whence he threatened
with feeble insistence to pop up at any moment like a strange question
or a sudden shame. She hid him in a rosy flush which a breath could
have made flame unbearably, and she hid from him behind the light
garrulity of Mrs. Cafferty, through which now and again, as through a
veil, she saw the spike of his helmet, a wiry bristling moustache, a
surge of great shoulders. On these ghostly indications she heaped a
tornado of words which swamped the wraith, but she knew he was waiting
to catch her alone, and would certainly catch her, and the knowledge
made her hate him.

XXII

Mrs. Cafferty suggested that she and Mary should go out together to
purchase that day's dinner, and by the time she had draped her
shoulders in a shawl, buried her head in a bonnet, cautioned all her
brood against going near the fireplace, the coal box and the slop
bucket, cut a slice of bread for each of them, and placed each of them
in charge of all the rest, Mary's more elaborate dressing was within
two stages