and there was a foot-bath in the
room, and in the summer we had a bath and were put to bed afterwards for
fear we might catch cold. My stepmother didn't worry much; she used to
wear pink dresses all over lace, and the older she got the prettier the
dresses got. When is she going?"

"Who? Minora? I haven't asked her that."

"Then I will. It is really bad for her art to be neglected like this.
She has been here an unconscionable time,--it must be nearly three
weeks."

"Yes, she came the same day you did," I said pleasantly.

Irais was silent. I hope she was reflecting that it is not worse to
neglect one's art than one's husband, and her husband is lying all this
time stretched on a bed of sickness, while she is spending her days so
agreeably with me. She has a way of forgetting that she has a home, or
any other business in the world than just to stay on chatting with me,
and reading, and singing, and laughing at any one there is to laugh at,
and kissing the babies, and tilting with the Man of Wrath. Naturally I
love her--she is so pretty that anybody with eyes in his head must love
her--but too much of anything is bad, and next month the passages and
offices are to be whitewashed, and people who have ever whitewashed
their houses inside know what nice places they are to live in while it
is being done; and there will be no dinner for Irais, and none of those
succulent salads full of caraway seeds that she so devotedly loves. I
shall begin to lead her thoughts gently back to her duties by inquiring
every day anxiously after her husband's health. She is not very fond of
him, because he does not run and hold the door open for her every time
she gets up to leave the room; and though she has asked him to do so,
and told him how much she wishes he would, he still won't. She stayed
once in a house where there was an Englishman, and his nimbleness in
regard to doors and chairs so impressed her that her husband has had no
peace since, and each time she has to go out of a room she is reminded
of her disregarded wishes, so that a shut door is to her symbolic of the
failure of her married life, and the very sight of one makes her wonder
why she was born; at least, that is what she told me once, in a burst
of confidence. He is quite a nice, harmless little man, pleasant to talk
to, good-tempered, and full of fun; but he thinks he is too old to begin
to learn new and uncomfortable ways, and he has that horror of being
made better b