Page:Sheila and Others (1920).djvu/130

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
118
SHEILA AND OTHERS

those innumerable women whose capacities are not all soaked up, so to speak, by the domestic round. She craved some interchange of life at first hand. The two older daughters had "taken" stenography and appeared to be successfully launched on adventurous and brilliant careers of their own. Delphine, the third daughter (what an index to stifled mothers' lives the children's names often are!) was at school still, and by all inferences must have been a singularly self-sufficing young person. All three had apparently stepped over the rim of the parental nest, save for such minor considerations as cooking and plain-sewing, which their mother of course still did. The last and littlest of the quartette had as yet such a tendency to "stay put" (like plaster) that she was a negligible quantity. At first blush one might think that four daughters and a husband to cook for and look after, would sufficiently engage a homemaker's energies and no doubt they did so far as the outer and more visible needs are concerned. But there may exist other needs that a preoccupied and opinionated husband (I never saw the gentleman, but his wife always referred to him as Mr. Willkit) and three ag-