ban bungalow with a neat roadster to whisk
her into business and whisk her away from it. The frilly,
cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn part of Mary would have
long ago vanished, leaving the business woman quite serene and
satisfied. She would find her happiness in mere things--in owning
her home; in facing old age single-handed and knowing it would not
bring the gray wolf; in helping Luke through college while her
mother was in a comfy orthodox heaven with plenty of plates of hot
cakes and dozens of starched window curtains; in rejoicing at some new
possession for her living room, at her immaculate business costumes,
new books, tickets for the opera season; in vacationing wherever she
wished, sometimes with other commercial nuns and sometimes alone;
in having that selfish, tempting freedom of time and lack of
personal demands which permit a woman to be always well groomed
and physically rested, and to take refuge in a sanitarium whenever
business worries pressed too hard. To sum it up: it meant to sit on
the curbstone--a nice, steam-heated, artistically furnished
curbstone, to be sure, and have to watch the procession pass by.

The other fork in the road led to a shadowy rainbow since Mary knew so
little concerning it. It comprised the exacting, unselfish role of
having baby fingers tagging at her skirts and shutting her away from
easy routines and lack of responsibility; of having a house to suit
her family first and herself last; of growing old and tired with the
younger things growing up and away from her, and the strong-shouldered
man demanding to be mothered, after the fashion of all really
strong-shouldered and successful men--requiring more of her patience
and love than all the young things combined; of subordinating her
personality, perhaps her ideas, and most certainly her surface
interests. To be that almost mystical relation, a wife; which includes
far more than having Mrs. Stephen O'Valley--just for example--on a
calling card.

To her lot would fall the task of always being there to welcome the
strong man with tender joy when he has succeeded or to comfort him
with equal tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring
him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof
from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser
emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or
moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered
to the