er, or the showroom, or
whatever line you're in, to marry on an income not so very much bigger
than your own, that you're going to live in a palace and be waited upon
ever afterwards. You'll have to get up early and cook Osborn's
breakfast, shan't you, before he goes out? And make the beds and sweep
and dust? And you're buying pink tulle caps as if you were going to
breakfast in bed every day!"

"A little housework's nothing! A girl can wear pretty things when she's
married, I suppose?"

"Oh, she _can_."

"She ought to. A man has a right to expect--"

"You'll find a man expects everything he has a right to, and a hundred
per cent. more."

"Osborn is very different from most men."

Julia smiled, stood up, and pressed her hands over her hips to settle
her skirt smoothly; she had an air of abandoning the talk as useless.
Her eyes were tired and her mouth drooped.

"It isn't as though you knew such a great deal about men, dear," Marie
added.

"I don't want to," said Julia.

"Surely, you must like Osborn?"

"What does it matter whether I do or don't, since you do?"

"I can't think how anyone can fail to like Osborn."

"Of course you can't."

"Even you must own he's the best-tempered boy living."

"I shan't own anything of the kind till you've been married three
months, and he's had some bad dinners, and late breakfasts, and has got
a bit sick of the butcher's bill. Then we'll see."

"Little things like these can't matter between people who really love
each other. You don't understand."

"It's just these little things that take the edge off."

Marie's mother looked in and smiled to see her girl fingering her
pretty things.

"Aren't you two nearly ready to leave the inspection and come to tea?"

"Julia doesn't like my caps, mum."

"Yes, I do," said Julia; "all I'm asking, Mrs. Amber, is, when is she
going to wear them?"

Marie's mother came in and sat down and thought.

"Ah," she said, shaking her head and looking pinched about the lips,
"I don't know. You modern girls buy all these extraordinary things.
You ape rich women; but you'll never be able to pay the everlasting
cleaners' bills for those caps."

"She'll soon give up wearing them, Mrs. Amber."

"I'm sure I shan't," Marie denied.

"When I was a girl," said Mrs. Amber, smoothing her lap reminiscently,
"I remember I wanted a grand trousseau. But girls lived at home more in
those days; they didn't go out typing and what not, earning money