, and I shall get mother to tell him too. We shall
persuade him."

"How is your husband?" Julia asked punctiliously.

"Very well, thank you."

"Still delighted with domestic life?"

"Oh, that doesn't last, of course," said Marie, looking away and
sighing. "A man always gets to think of his home as just the place
where bills are sent. Osborn's out a good deal in the evenings, like
other men, of course. There's one thing--it leaves me very free.
There's always something to be done, you see, and I can get through a
great deal in the evenings if he's out."

"And if he's in?"

"Oh well, a man likes one to sit down and talk to him, naturally."

"How awf'ly obliging wives are!"

"My dear, if you were married, you'd know that the only way is to
humour them."

The waitress came in with the tea tray and set the table daintily. To
Julia it was a matter of course, but Marie watched the deft girl who
handled things so swiftly and quietly; she took in the neatness of her
black frock, and the starched whiteness of her laundering; and when
the maid had left them, she turned with an envious, smiling sigh to
Julia, and said:

"The servants here are so nice. I always used to think, when I had a
maid, she'd look like that. We were going to have one, you know, when
Osborn got his first rise after we were married, but George came; and
now--three of them! It'll always be impossible, of course."

"I daresay you'd rather have the children than the maid."

"Of course I would--the priceless things!" Marie cried, her small pale
face warming with maternity.

Julia dispensed tea; and for awhile refused to allow her guest to talk
more until she was refreshed. And when she was refreshed and rested
among the amenities of the mauve room, that absorption in the affairs
around which her whole life moved and had its being grew less keen;
her preoccupations lifted; she left the problem which, even here, had
begun to worry her, as to whether a pound, or three-quarters of a
pound only, of wool would make George a jersey suit, and she turned
her eyes with a kind of wondering recollection upon the world outside.
She began by looking around the room at the many well-dressed, softly
chattering women; at the cut of their gowns and the last thing in
hats; then her look wandered to Julia and took in her freshness, the
beauty of her tailoring, and the expensiveness of her appearance
generally.

"I feel so shabby among you all," she murmured, with a