nourishing as could be; I'd know that guests would be well cared for
and that bills would be paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a
house, supposed to do more than that? I don't want to be a mere
figurehead."

Frowning at her own reflection in the glass, deeply in earnest, she
tried to puzzle it out.

"In the old times, when women had big estates to look after," she
presently pursued, "servants, horses, cows, vegetables and fruit
gardens, soap-making and weaving and chickens and babies, they had
real responsibilities, they had real interests. Housekeeping to-day
isn't interesting. It's confining, and it's monotonous. But take it
away, and what is a woman going to do?"

"That," her husband answered seriously, "is the real problem of the
day, I truly believe. That is what you women have to discover.
Delegating your housekeeping, how are you going to use your
energies, and find the work you want to do in the world? How are you
going to manage the questions of being obliged to work at home, and
to suit your hours to yourself, and to really express yourselves,
and at the same time get done some of the work of the world that is
waiting for women to do."

His wife continued to eye him expectantly.

"Well, how?" said she.

"I don't know. I'm asking you!" he answered pointedly. Mrs.
Salisbury sighed.