CHAPTER VI

DISCIPLINE


Marie meant always to be trim and neat and lovely, a feast for the eye
of man. But when winter had settled upon town in a crescendo of cold,
and when you thought twice before lighting that gas-fire which you had
meant to dress by every morning, and when, too, Osborn began to resume
his normal habit of sleeping till the very last moment, why, you no
longer gave yourself--or rather, Osborn no longer gave himself--the
trouble of rising to make tea. Marie had much more to do than merely
dress, and as soon as she had opened her sleepy eyes she sprang
resolutely out into the grim cold that seemed so closely to surround
her snug bed, and fell to work. She felt as if the toil of a lifetime
lay behind her, by the time she and Osborn sat opposite to one another
at their breakfast table, and yet, too, as if the toil of a lifetime
lay before her.

Marie took upon her shoulders most of the laundering. Osborn said
"Clever kid" when he knew, but it did not impress him much; his
feeling about it was vague. Did he not work all day himself? All this
fiddling donkey-work with which women occupied themselves at home--he
dismissed it. Always, when he returned, by the dining-room fire, in an
easy chair and a decent frock, sat Marie, sweet and leisured. It was
evident that her household duties did not overcome her.

And all day the flat was desolately quiet. How queer women's lives