Grannie Amber stayed a while longer to watch the two elder children’s bathing; she squeezed her plump form alongside Marie in the tiny bathroom, and from time to time emitted laughs and cries of fond delight.  She made herself busy, when the matter was over, in folding towels and wiping up the pools of water which the rampant children had splashed upon the floor.  She followed them with her waddling trip along the corridor to see them snugly tucked up in their beds in what had been Osborn’s dressing-room, and at last, having murmured, “God bless you all, ducks!” her good work accomplished, she stole away.

The flush of exertion stained Marie’s pale cheeks now; it was 6.15, and there was no time for anything but to fly to the kitchen.  It was always so, but happily there was seldom time to think about it.  If you began to question why, the potatoes boiled dry in immediate protest against your discontent.  By the time Marie had set the gas-stove going full blast the very tips of her nose and ears were crimson.  Without pause she ran back into her bedroom to put on her best slippers, the only evening toilet she had time to make.  She stood a few seconds leaning towards the glass, as she had stood that birthday night after her husband had taken her to dine at the Royal Red, and she fingered her blouse, her hair, her manicure tools passionately, sadly and appealingly, as if she begged them:  “Do your best.”  The underlying anxiety which her confidences to Julia had awakened looked haggardly from her face.

“I am growing very old,” she thought, terrified.  “I am growing much older than thirty-one.  I look older than Osborn.”

She was quivering to woman’s ageless problem, the problem of the body, the problem of the tired brain and the driven heart; the problem of the great and cruel competition between the woman of pleasure and the woman of toil.

While she still stood there, she heard her husband’s key in the lock.

She put up her hands to smooth the worry away from her face and, with the impress of her fingers white on her flushed cheeks, stared at herself again.  Surely that was better?  She wore a smile, the smile of the Wise Wives, and went out to meet him.  He was shedding his overcoat, and as he hung it up he whistled a tune with joy in it.  She was struck instantly by something about him, a tiny but material change, which she could not fathom.

“Hallo, old girl!” he turned to say cheerfully.

“Hallo, dear!” she replied.

“Dinner ready?”

“Quite!  I’ll bring it in.”

He went into the dining-room and stood on the hearth in the attitude long appropriate to a master of the house.  His eyes were shining, though his brow still wore its habitual creases as if he were thinking very carefully.  He stared before him, but without noting anything.  They still had a pretty dinner-table, a dinner-table almost, if not quite, up to early-married standards, and the shaded candles were lighted and