don't do ours. Not only that, but every improvement that comes to
ours comes from men. They invent our conveniences, they design our
stoves and arrange our sinks. Not because they know anything about
it, but because we're not interested."

"One would think you had done your own work for twenty years!" said
Mrs. Brown.

"I never did it," Mrs. Burgoyne answered smiling, "but I sometimes
wish I could. I sometimes envy those busy women who have small
houses, new babies, money cares--it must be glorious to rise to
fresh emergencies every hour of your life. A person like myself is
handicapped. I can't demonstrate that I believe what I say. Everyone
thinks me merely a little affected about it. If I were such a woman,
I'd glory in clipping my life of everything but the things I needed,
and living like one of my own children, as simply as a lot of
peasants!"

"And no one would ever be any the wiser," said Mrs. Brown.

"I don't know. Quiet little isolated lives have a funny way of
getting out into the light. There was that little peasant girl at
Domremy, for instance; there was that gentle saint who preached
poverty to the birds; there was Eugenie Guerin, and the Cure of Ars,
and the few obscure little English weavers--and there was the
President who split--"

"I thought we'd come to him!" chuckled the doctor.

"Well," Mrs. Burgoyne smiled, a little confused at having betrayed