ward the door,
"and I'm gwine now." As she disappeared, she remarked casually, "I
didn't have no time to wash the supper dishes. Good-by."

"What's the matter with Mary?" called Paul.

Lydia went back to him, trying to smile. "She's gone--left," she
announced.

Paul opened his eyes with a look of keen annoyance. "You can't break in
a new cook _now_!" he said. "She can't go now!"

"She's gone," repeated Lydia wearily. "I don't know how anybody could
make her stay."

Paul got up from the couch with his lips closed tightly together, and,
sitting down in a straight chair, took Lydia on his knee as though she
were a child. "Now, see here, my wife, you mustn't get your feelings
hurt if I do some plain talking for a minute. You've been telling me
what you think about things, and now it's my turn. And what _I_ think is
that if my dear young wife would spend more time looking after her own
business she'd have fewer complaints to make about my doing the same.
The thing for you to do is to accept conditions as they are and do your
best in them--and, really, Lydia, make your best a little better."

Lydia was on the point of nervous tears from sheer fatigue, but she
clung to her point with a tenacity which in so yielding a nature was
profoundly eloquent. "But, Paul, if everybody had always settled down
and accepted conditions, and never tried to make them better--"

"There's a difference between conditions that have to be accepted and
those that can be changed," said Paul sententiously.

Lydia tore herself away from him and stood up, trembling with
excitement. She felt that they had stumbled upon the very root of the
matter. "But who's to decide which our conditions are?"

Paul caught at her, laughing. "I am, of course, you firebrand! Didn't
you promise to honor and obey?" He went on with more seriousness, a
tender, impatient, condescending seriousness: "Now, Lydia, just stop and
think! Do you, can you, consider this a good time for you to try to
settle the affairs of the universe--still all upset about your father's
death, and goodness knows what crazy ideas it started in your head--and
with an addition to the family expected! _And_ the cook just left!"

"But that's the way things always are!" she protested. "That's life.
There's never a time when something important hasn't just happened or
isn't just going to happen, you have to go right ahead, or you
never--why, Paul, I've waited for two years for a really good chance