I
know what the doctor said, but that's all rot, and he knew it. You had
him hypnotized. You'd have to give up everything for it--all your social
duties, all our larks together. Oh, it's absurd! You, to spend all your
time doing menial work--scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten
dollars a week!"

"It isn't menial work," Rose insisted. "It's--apprentice work. After
I've been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I'll be able to
let Mrs. Ruston go and take _her_ job. I'll be really competent to take
care of my own children. I don't pretend I am now."

"I don't see why you can't do that as things are now. She'll let you
practise bathing them and things like that, and certainly no one would
object to your wheeling them out in the pram. But the nurse-maid would
be on hand in case ..."

"I'm to take it on then," said Rose, and her voice had a new ring in
it--the ring of scornful anger--"I'm to take it on as a sort of polite
sentimental amusement. I'm not to do any real work for them that depends
on me to get done. I'm not to be able to feel that, even in a
bottle-washing sort of way, I'm doing an indispensable service for them.
They're not to need me for anything, the poor little mites! They're to
be something for me to have a sort of emotional splurge with, just
as"--she laughed raggedly--"just as some of the wives you're so fond of
talking about, are to their husbands."

He stared at her in perfectly honest bewilderment. He'd never seen her
like this before.

"You're talking rather wild I think, Rose," he said very quietly.

"I'm talking what I've learned from you," she said, but she did get her
voice in control again. "You've taught me the difference between real
work, and the painless imitation of it that a lot of us women spend our
lives on--between doing something because it's got to be done and is up
to you, and--finding something to do to spend the time.

"Oh, Rodney, _please_ try to forget that I'm your wife and that you're
in love with me. Can't you just say: `Here's A, or B, or X, a perfectly
healthy woman, twenty-two years old, and a little real work would be
good for her'?"

She won, with much pleading, a sort of troubled half-assent from him.
The matter might be borne in mind. It could be taken up again with Mrs.
Ruston.

But Mrs. Ruston was adamant. Under no conceivable circumstances could
she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own
hired assistant. There wer