Contrary Mary

In the Tower Rooms--June.

I have been working in the office for a week, and it has been the

hardest week of my life. But please don't think that I have any

regrets--it is only that the world has been so lovely outside, and that

I have been shut in.

I am beginning to understand that the woman in the home has a freedom

which she doesn't sufficiently value. She can run down-town in the

morning; or slip out in the afternoon, or put off until to-morrow

something which should have been done to-day. But men can't run out or

slip away or put off--no matter if the sun is shining, or the birds

singing, or the wind calling, or the open road leading to adventure.

Yet there are compensations, and I am trying to see them. I am trying

to live up to my theories. And I am sustained by the thought that at

last I am a wage-earner--independent of any one--capable of buying my

own bread and butter, though all masculine help should fail!

Aunt Isabelle is a dear, and so is Susan Jenks. And that's another

thing to think about. What will the wage-earning part of the world do,

when there are no home-keepers left? If it were not for Aunt Isabelle

and Susan, there wouldn't be any one to trail after me with cushions

for my tired back, and cold things for me to drink on hot days, and hot

things to drink on cool days.

I begin to perceive faintly the masculine point of view. If I were a

man I should want a wife for just that--to toast my slippers before the

fire as they do in the old-fashioned stories, to have my dinner piping

hot, and to smooth the wrinkles out of my forehead.

That's why I'm not sure that I should make a comfortable sort of wife.

I can't quite see myself toasting the slippers. But I can see

Constance toasting them, or Leila--but Grace and I--you see, after all,

there are home women and the other kind, and I fancy that I'm the other

kind.

This, you'll understand, is a philosophy founded on the vast experience

of a week in the workaday world--I'll let you know later of any further

modification of my theories.

Well, the house seems empty with just the three of us, and Pittiwitz.

I miss Constance beyond words, and the beautiful baby. Constance

wanted to name her for me, but Gordon insisted that she should be

called after Constance, so they compromised on Mary-Constance, such a

long name for such a mite.

We all went to New York to see them off. By "all," I mean our

crowd--Aunt Frances and Grace, Leila and the General--oh, poor little

Leila--Delilah and Colin Quale, Aunt Isabelle and I, Susan Jenks with

the baby in her arms until the very last minute--and Porter Bigelow.