ONE of the mysterious things of life is that when you go off on a vacation there is never anything fit to clean with when you get back, and with all the money gone you have to begin restocking the house.
It always seemed to Alice that trying to adjust income to expenditure in her family was like trying to cover a bed with a sheet too small for it. Once you got it tucked in at the head a discouraging piece would yawn at the foot. Adjust it to a nicety all over, and there would be a fringe all the way round on the outside. Give it a little haul there, and some other part of the mattress would be laid bare and naked.
And out of whom did it come, she asked herself bitterly, all this pinching and straining about things? Out of herself, of course. It was she who was inevitably the uncovered part of the mattress. Whenever she got around to getting a new dress, wasn't it always just at that moment that she discovered that Jamie hadn't a romper to wear; that every child of hers needed shoes, yes, and shoes in several colors and rubbers to match; that Sara's dresses were all high above the knee; and on that very day, as likely as not, Robert would slide a base and come home with a pair of trousers torn to ribbons. How could a mother of children keep looking decent without clothes in spite of all her worries, and the years whizzing by like anything? And what happened to women when they didn't look decent? Any woman can tell you that—they lose their husband's love, of
