ooks in their cases. Nobody ever comes in to
spend an evening. They used to try it when we were first married, but
I believe the uninhabited appearance of our parlors discouraged them.
Everybody has stopped coming now, and Aunt Zeruah says 'it is such a
comfort, for now the rooms are always in order. How poor Mrs.
Crowfield lives, with her house such a thoroughfare, she is sure she
can't see. Sophie never would have strength for it; but then, to be
sure, some folks ain't as particular as others. Sophie was brought up
in a family of very particular housekeepers.'"

My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile that has brightened
up her sofa for so many years.

Bill added bitterly,--

"Of course, I couldn't say that I wished the whole set and system of
housekeeping women at the--what-'s-his-name?--because Sophie would
have cried for a week, and been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. I
know it's not the poor girl's fault; I try sometimes to reason with
her, but you can't reason with the whole of your wife's family, to the
third and fourth generation backwards; but I'm sure it's hurting her
health,--wearing her out. Why, you know Sophie used to be the life of
our set; and now she really seems eaten up with care from morning to
night, there are so many things in the house that something dreadful
is happening to all the while, and the servants we get are so clumsy.
Why, when I sit with Sophie and Aunt Zeruah, it's nothing but a
constant string of complaints about the girls in the kitchen. We keep
changing our servants all the time, and they break and destroy so that
now we are turned out of the use of all our things. We not only eat in
the basement, but all our pretty table-things are put away, and we
have all the cracked plates and cracked tumblers and cracked teacups
and old buck-handled knives that can be raised out of chaos. I could
use these things and be merry if I didn't know we had better ones; and
I can't help wondering whether there isn't some way that our table
could be set to look like a gentleman's table; but Aunt Zeruah says
that 'it would cost thousands, and what difference does it make as
long as nobody sees it but us?' You see, there is no medium in her
mind between china and crystal and cracked earthenware. Well, I'm
wondering how all these laws of the Medes and Persians are going to
work when the children come along. I'm in hopes the children will
soften off the old folks, and make the house more h