Gertie, too, had made good resolutions.  She was at heart the more generous nature of the two.  She was prepared to find her husband’s sister unskilled to the point of incompetency in all the housewifely lore of which she was past mistress; for she, too, had her traditions.  She would have laughed at the idea that it was possible for her to be jealous of anybody.  But secretly she knew that there was one thing which aroused in her a frenzy of jealous rage; that was those years of her husband’s life in which she had neither part nor lot.  Any reference to his old life ‘at home’ fairly maddened her.

And deep down in her heart, each woman nursed a grievance.  With Gertie it was the remembrance of the angry letter of protest which Nora had written her brother when she learned of his approaching marriage and which he had been indiscreet enough to show her; with Nora, it was the recollection of Gertie’s laugh the night of her arrival when her brother’s hired servant had dared to take her for a moment in his arms.

Still, any open rupture might have been avoided or at least delayed for several months longer, if either could have been persuaded to exercise a little more patience and self-control.  Each of them, in her different way, had known adversity.  Both of them had had to learn to control tempers naturally high while they were still dependent.  But it never occurred to either of them that the obligation to do so still existed.

From Gertie’s point of view, Nora was just as much a dependent as in the days when she was a hired companion to a rich woman.  It was her house in law and in fact, for her husband had made it over to her.  It was her bread that she ate, her bed she slept in.  It behooved her, therefore, to be a little less lofty and condescending.  She had always known how it would be, and it was only because the project seemed so near her husband’s heart that she had consented to such an experiment.

In simple justice it must be said that such a thought had never entered Nora’s head.  She had accepted gladly her brother’s invitation to make her home with him.  What more natural that he should offer it, now that he was able to do so?  In return she was perfectly willing to do everything she could to help in all the woman’s work about the house as far as her ignorance would permit.  It could hardly be expected that she would be as proficient in household work as a person who had done it all her life.  She was more than willing to concede her sister-in-law’s superiority in all such matters.  And she was perfectly ready to learn all that Gertie would teach her.  She had, in everything, been prepared to meet her half-way; further she would not go.  For the rest, it was her brother’s place to protect her.

Sadly Nora confessed to herself that Eddie had deteriorated in a degree that she could not have believed possible.  The first shock had come when they sat down to supper the night of her arrival.  To her amazed disgust, they had all eaten at the same table, hired men and all.  And then, to see her brother, a gentleman by birth, breeding, and training, sitting down at his own table in his shirt-sleeves!