At Home with the dines | Page 5

Lilian Bell
these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a
hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon,
and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd give
five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old woman's
face, for she talks for all the world just like my own mother.' And with
that he exchanged the two cracked eggs for two perfect ones out of
another order, and took the good ones in to Mary."
"I wonder if it will last," I said to a woman who was envying the fact
that I could persuade Aubrey to go out with me whenever I wanted him
to.
"It won't last!" she declared, cheerfully. "And it won't last that Mr.
Jardine will go calling with you evenings. The clubs will claim him
within six months, and as for Mary--I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll wager
you a ten-pound box of candy that within a year you will have lost both
your husband and your cook."
"Lost my husband," I cried, my face stiffening.
"Oh, I only mean as we all lose our husbands," she explained, airily. "I

used to have Jack, but I am married now to golf links and the club."
"I'll take your bet," I said.
"You'll lose," she laughed. "They are both too perfect to last."
"They are not!" I cried.
But when the door closed, I rapped on wood.
CHAPTER II
THEORIES
If there is anything more delightful than to furnish one's first home, I
have yet to discover it. Aubrey says that "moving in goes it one better,"
but his preference is based on the solid satisfaction he takes in putting
in two shelves where one grew before and in providing towel-racks and
closet-hooks wherever there is an inviting wall-space for them.
But to me, even the list I made out and changed and figured on and
priced before I made a single purchase was full of possibilities, and
contained wild flutters of excitement on account of certain innovations
I wished to try.
"Aubrey," I said one evening as the Angel sat reading Draper's
"Intellectual Development of Europe," "have you any pet theories?"
"What's that? Pet theories about what?"
"Housekeeping."
"I don't quite understand. I've never kept house, you know."
"I mean did your mother keep her house and buy her furniture and
manage her servants to suit you, or exactly as you would do if you had
been in her place?"
"Not in the least," said the Angel, laying down his book, all interest at

once.
"Ah! I knew it! Then you have theories! That's what I wanted to bring
out. Now I have theories, too. One is the rag-bag theory."
"The--?"
"The theory that every housewife must have a rag-bag. My mother had
one because her mother did and her mother because hers did, and so on
back to the English one who probably brought her rag-bag across with
her. Ours was made of bed-ticking, and had a draw-string in it and hung
in the bathroom closet. Now if you ever tried to lift a heavy bag down
from a hook and knew the bother of emptying it of neat little rolls of
every sort of cloth from big rolls of cotton-batting to little bundles of
silk patches and having to look through every one of them to find a
scrap of white taffeta to line a stock, then you know what a trial of
temper the family rag-bag is."
"And you--" said the Angel, who is definite in his conclusions.
"I mean to have a large drawer in a good light absolutely sacrificed, as
some people would call it, to the scraps. When you want a rag or a bone
or a hank of hair in our house, all you will have to do is to pull out an
easy sliding drawer without opening a door that sticks, or crawling into
a dark corner, or having to light a candle, or doing anything to ruffle
your temper or your hair. A flood of brilliant sunlight or moonlight will
pour into my rag-drawer, and a few pawings of your unoccupied hand
will bring everything to the top. Won't that be joyful?"
Aubrey, who loves to fuss about repairs and is for ever wanting
material, was so enchanted with the picture I drew that he longed to
have a cut finger to bind up on the spot.
"Have you any more theories?" he asked, laying Draper on his knee
without even marking his place.
"A few. Some are about buying furniture."

"We want everything good," said Aubrey, firmly.
"More than that. We want some things beautiful. And some things very
expensive."
I thought I saw the bank-book give a nervous flop just
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