don’t want to impose upon a girl; I never did impose upon a girl; but I like to feel that I’m mistress in my own house.  If the work is too hard one day, I will make it easier the next, and so on.  But, as Mat says, it looks so disobliging in a maid to have her race off; she doesn’t care whether you get any tea or not; she’s enjoying herself!  And after all one’s kindness—­And then another thing,” she presently roused herself to add, “Mat thinks that it is very bad management on my part to let Justine handle money.  She says—­”

“I devoutly wish that Mattie Otis would mind—­” Mr. Salisbury did not finish his sentence.  He wound his watch, laid it on his bureau, and went on, more mildly:  “If you can do better than Justine, it may or may not be worth your while to take that out of her hands; but, if you can’t, it seems to me sheer folly.  My Lord, Sally—­”

“Yes, I know!  I know,” Mrs. Salisbury said hastily.  “But, really, Kane,” she went on slowly, the color coming into her face, “let us suppose that every family had a graduate cook, who marketed and managed.  And let us suppose the children, like ours, out of the nursery.  Then just what share of her own household responsibility is a woman supposed to take?

“You are eternally saying, not about me, but about other men’s wives, that women to-day have too much leisure as it is.  But, with a Justine, why, I could go off to clubs and card parties every day!  I’d know that the house was clean, the meals as good and as nourishing as could be; I’d know that guests would be well cared for and that bills would be paid.  Isn’t a woman, the mistress of a house, supposed to do more than that?  I don’t want to be a mere figurehead.”

Frowning at her own reflection in the glass, deeply in earnest, she tried to puzzle it out.

“In the old times, when women had big estates to look after,” she presently pursued, “servants, horses, cows, vegetables and fruit gardens, soap-making and weaving and chickens and babies, they had real responsibilities, they had real interests.  Housekeeping to-day isn’t interesting.  It’s confining, and it’s monotonous.  But take it away, and what is a woman going to do?”

“That,” her husband answered seriously, “is the real problem of the day, I truly believe.  That is what you women have to discover.  Delegating your housekeeping, how are you going to use your energies, and find the work you want to do in the world?  How are you going to manage the questions of being obliged to work at home, and to suit your hours to yourself, and to really express yourselves, and at the same time get done some of the work of the world that is waiting for women to do.”

His wife continued to eye him expectantly.

“Well, how?” said she.

“I don’t know.  I’m asking you!” he answered pointedly.  Mrs. Salisbury sighed.

“Dear me, I do get so tired of this talk of efficiency, and women’s work in the world!” she said.  “I wish one might feel it was enough to live along quietly, busy with dressmaking, or perhaps now and then making a fancy dessert for guests, giving little teas and card parties, and making calls.  It—­” a yearning admiration rang in her voice, “it seems such a dignified, pleasant ideal to live up to!” she said.