So there they sat on a park bench in the pleasant afternoon air, filling their lives with emptiness. They had married, and brought children into the world; sacrificed for them, managed a household, been widowed. They represented magnificent achievement, those four old women, though they themselves did not know it. They had come up the long hill, reached its apex, and come down. Their journey was over and yet they sat by the roadside. They knew that which could have helped younger travellers over the next hill, but those fleet-footed ones pressed on, wanting none of their wisdom. Ma Mandle alone still moved. She still queened it over her own household; she alone still had the delightful task of making a man comfortable. If the world passed them by as they sat there it did not pass unscathed. Their shrewd old eyes regarded the panorama, undeceived. They did not try to keep up with the procession, but they derived a sly amusement and entertainment from their observation of the modes and manners of this amazing day and age. Perhaps it was well that this plump matron in the over-tight skirt or that miss mincing on four-inch heels could not hear the caustic comment of the white-haired four sitting so mildly on the bench at the side of the path.
Their talk, stray as it might, always came back to two subjects. They seemed never to tire of them. Three talked of their daughters-in-law, and bitterness rasped their throats. One talked of her son, and her voice was unctuous with pride.
“My son’s wife—” one of the three would begin. There was something terribly significant in the mock respect with which she uttered the title.
“If I had ever thought,” Mrs. Brunswick would say, shaking her head, “if I had ever thought that I would live to see the day when I had to depend on strangers for my comfort, I would have wished myself dead.”
“You wouldn’t call your son a stranger, Mrs. Brunswick!” in shocked tones from Mrs. Mandle.
“A stranger has got more consideration. I count for nothing. Less than nothing. I’m in the way. I don’t interfere in that household. I see enough, and I hear enough, but I say nothing. My son’s wife, she says it all.”