Nevertheless, it is often extraordinary just what she does do.  For instance I knew a family of girls upon whose college education an immense sum had been expended, and whose intellectual arrogance I never have seen equalled.  When their father failed and died, leaving not so much as a small life insurance, what did they do?  Teach?  Write?  Edit?  Become some rich and ignorant man’s secretary?  Not a bit of it.  They cooked.  Always noted in their palmy days for their “table,” and addicted to relieving the travail of intellect with the sedative of the homeliest of the minor arts, they began on preserves for the Woman’s Exchange; and half the rich women in town were up at their house day after day stirring molten masses in a huge pot on a red-hot range.

It was sometime before they were taken seriously, and, particularly after the enthusiasm of their friends waned, there was a time of hard anxious struggle.  But they were robust and determined, and in time they launched out as caterers and worked up a first-class business.  They took their confections to the rear entrances of their friends’ houses on festive occasions and accepted both pay and tips with lively gratitude.  They educated their younger brothers and lost their arrogance.  They never lost their friends.

Owing to dishonest fiction the impression prevails throughout the world that “Society” is heartless and that the rich and well-to-do drop their friends the moment financial reverses force them either to reduce their scale of living far below the standard, or go to work.  When that happens it is the fault of the reversed, not of the entrenched.  False pride, constant whining, or insupportable irritabilities gradually force them into a dreary class apart.  If anything, people of wealth and secure position take a pride in standing by their old friends (their “own sort"), in showing themselves above all the means sins of which fiction and the stage have accused them, and in lending what assistance they can.  Even when the head of the family has disgraced himself and either blown out his brains or gone to prison, it depends entirely upon the personalities of his women whether or not they retain their friends.  In fact any observant student of life is reminded daily that one’s real position in the world depends upon personality, more particularly if backed by character.  Certainly it is nine-tenths of the battle for struggling women.

Another woman whom I always had looked upon as a charming butterfly, but who, no doubt, had long shown her native shrewdness and determination in the home, stepped into her husband’s shoes when he collapsed from strain, abetted by drink, and now competes in the insurance business with the best of the men.  But she had borne the last of her children and she has perfect health.

Galsworthy’s play, The Fugitive, may not have been good drama but it had the virtue of provoking thought after one had left the theater.  More than ever it convinced me, at least, that the women of means and leisure with sociological leanings should let the working girl take care of herself for a time and devote their attention to the far more hopeless problem of the lady suddenly thrown upon her own resources.