LITMIR.BIZ

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of telling him not to help her too much, for fear, after the manner of her kind, she should discover a delicacy of constitution which would prevent her from lifting the water-bottle even when it was empty.

      "And I'll tell you what I've been doing on the quiet for him to show him that I'm not ungrateful. You know his white waistcoats have been done up at the laundry so scandalous that I'd not have the face to be taking your money if I were that laundryman, so I've just done them myself, and would you take a look at them before I carry one back for him to put on?"

      I took a look, and they were of that faultless order of work that makes you think the millennium has come.

      I took one back to where the Angel stood before the mirror wrestling in a speaking silence with his tie. I had not been married long, but I had already learned that there are some moments in a man's life which are not for speech. He smiled at me in the glass to let me know that he recognized my presence, and would attend to me later.

      When the tie was made, I drew a long breath.

      "The country is saved once more!" I sighed.

      He laughed. I mean he smiled. Not once a month does he laugh, and always then at something which I don't think in the least funny.

      As he took the waistcoat from my hand his face lighted up.

      "Now that is something like!" he said. "I tell you it pays to complain once in awhile. I wrote that laundry a scorcher about these waistcoats."

      "It does pay," I said. Then I explained.

      "Do you know what I think?" he said. "I think we've got a regular old cast-iron angel in Mary."

      "Oh, rap on wood," I cried, frantically reaching out with both hands.

       "Do you want her to spill soup down your neck tonight?"

      "I didn't think," he said, apologetically, groping for wood. "Now, do I dare speak?"

      "Yes, go on. What do you think of her?"

      "I think she is thoroughly competent to deal with the emergencies of a New York apartment-house. This morning just before I went out I heard her holding a heart-to-heart talk with the grocer. It seems that the eggs come in boxes done up in pink cotton and laid by patent hens that stamp their owner's name on each egg. For the privilege of eating these delicacies we pay the Paris price for eggs. Now it would also seem that these hens guarantee at that price to lay and deliver to the purchaser an unbroken, uncracked, wholly perfect egg in the first flush of its youth. But to-day the careless hens had delivered two cracked eggs out of one unhappy dozen to Mary. With a directness of address seldom met with in good society, Mary thus delivered herself down the dumb-waiter, 'Well, damn you for a groceryman—'"

      "Oh, Aubrey! Did she say that word?"

      "She said just that. 'When we are paying a dollar a look at eggs, what do you mean by sending me two cracked ones out of twelve? To be sure somebody has been sitting on these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon, and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd give five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old woman's face, for she talks for all the world just like my own mother.' And with that he exchanged the two cracked eggs for two perfect ones out of another order, and took the good ones in to Mary."

      "I wonder if it will last," I said to a woman who was envying the fact that I could persuade Aubrey to go out with me whenever I wanted him to.

      "It won't last!" she declared, cheerfully. "And it won't last that Mr. Jardine will go calling with you evenings. The clubs will claim him within six months, and as for Mary—I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll wager you a ten-pound box of candy that within a year you will have lost both your husband and your cook."

      "Lost my husband," I cried, my face stiffening.

      "Oh, I only mean as we all lose our husbands," she explained, airily.

       "I used to have Jack, but I am married now to golf links and the club."

      "I'll take your bet," I said.

      "You'll lose," she laughed. "They are both too perfect to last."

      "They are not!" I cried.

      But when the door closed, I rapped on wood.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      THEORIES

      If there is anything more delightful than to furnish one's first home, I have yet to discover it. Aubrey says that "moving in goes it one better," but his preference is based on the solid satisfaction he takes in putting in two shelves where one grew before and in providing towel-racks and closet-hooks wherever there is an inviting wall-space for them.

      But to me, even the list I made out and changed and figured on and priced before I made a single purchase was full of possibilities, and contained wild flutters of excitement on account of certain innovations I wished to try.

      "Aubrey," I said one evening as the Angel sat reading Draper's

       "Intellectual Development of Europe," "have you any pet theories?"

      "What's that? Pet theories about what?"

      "Housekeeping."

      "I don't quite understand. I've never kept house, you know."

      "I mean did your mother keep her house and buy her furniture and manage her servants to suit you, or exactly as you would do if you had been in her place?"

      "Not in the least," said the Angel, laying down his book, all interest at once.

      "Ah! I knew it! Then you have theories! That's what I wanted to bring out. Now I have theories, too. One is the rag-bag theory."

      "The—?"

      "The theory that every housewife must have a rag-bag. My mother had one because her mother did and her mother because hers did, and so on back to the English one who probably brought her rag-bag across with her. Ours was made of bed-ticking, and had a draw-string in it and hung in the bathroom closet. Now if you ever tried to lift a heavy bag down from a hook and knew the bother of emptying it of neat little rolls of every sort of cloth from big rolls of cotton-batting to little bundles of silk patches and having to look through every one of them to find a scrap of white taffeta to line a stock, then you know what a trial of temper the family rag-bag is."

      "And you—" said the Angel, who is definite in his conclusions.

      "I mean to have a large drawer in a good light absolutely sacrificed, as some people would call it, to the scraps. When you want a rag or a bone or a hank of hair in our house, all you will have to do is to pull out an easy sliding drawer without opening a door that sticks, or crawling into a dark corner, or having to light a candle, or doing anything to ruffle your temper or your hair. A flood of brilliant sunlight or moonlight will pour into my rag-drawer, and a few pawings of your unoccupied hand will bring everything to the top. Won't that be joyful?"

      Aubrey, who loves to fuss about repairs and is for ever wanting material, was so enchanted with the picture I drew that he longed to have a cut finger to bind up on the spot.

      "Have you any more theories?" he asked, laying Draper on his knee without even marking his place.

      "A few. Some are about buying furniture."

      "We want everything good," said Aubrey, firmly.

      "More than that. We want some things beautiful. And some things very expensive."

      I thought I saw the bank-book give a nervous flop just here. But perhaps it was only Aubrey's expression of countenance which changed.

      "For instance, I want no chairs

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