"Oh, is it you, B-Bertram? I didn't hear you come in. You--you s-said you weren't coming till six o'clock!" she choked.

"Billy, what is the meaning of this?"

"N-nothing. I--I guess I'm just tired."

"What have you been doing?" Bertram spoke sternly, almost sharply. He was wondering why he had not noticed before the little hollows in his wife's cheeks. "Billy, what have you been doing?"

"Why, n-nothing extra, only some sweeping, and cleaning out the refrigerator."

"Sweeping! Cleaning! _You!_ I thought Mrs. Durgin did that."

"She does. I mean she did. But she couldn't come. She broke her leg--fell off the stepladder where she was three days ago. So I _had_ to do it. And to-day, someway, everything went wrong. I burned me, and I cut me, and I used two sodas with not any cream of tartar, and I should think I didn't know anything, not anything!" And down went Billy's head into the pillows again in another burst of sobs.

With gentle yet uncompromising determination, Bertram gathered his wife into his arms and carried her to the big chair. There, for a few minutes, he soothed and petted her as if she were a tired child--which, indeed, she was.

"Billy, this thing has got to stop," he said then. There was a very inexorable ring of decision in his voice.

"What thing?"

"This housework business."

Billy sat up with a jerk.

"But, Bertram, it isn't fair. You can't--you mustn't--just because of to-day! I _can_ do it. I have done it. I've done it days and days, and it's gone beautifully--even if they did say I couldn't!"

"Couldn't what?"

"Be an e-efficient housekeeper."

"Who said you couldn't?"

"Aunt Hannah and K-Kate."

Bertram said a savage word under his breath.

"Holy smoke, Billy! I didn't marry you for a cook or a scrub-lady. If you _had_ to do it, that would be another matter, of course; and if we did have to do it, we wouldn't have a big house like this for you to do it in. But I didn't marry for a cook, and I knew I wasn't getting one when I married you."

Billy bridled into instant wrath.

"Well, I like that, Bertram Henshaw! Can't I cook? Haven't I proved that I can cook?"

Bertram laughed, and kissed the indignant lips till they quivered into an unwilling smile.

"Bless your s.p.u.n.ky little heart, of course you have! But that doesn't mean that I want you to do it. You see, it so happens that you can do other things, too; and I'd rather you did those. Billy, you haven't played to me for a week, nor sung to me for a month. You're too tired every night to talk, or read together, or go anywhere with me. I married for companionship--not cooking and sweeping!"

Billy shook her head stubbornly. Her mouth settled into determined lines.

"That's all very well to say. You aren't hungry now, Bertram. But it's different when you are, and they said 'twould be."

"Humph! 'They' are Aunt Hannah and Kate, I suppose."

"Yes--and the 'Talk to Young Wives.'"

"The w-what?"

Billy choked a little. She had forgotten that Bertram did not know about the "Talk to Young Wives." She wished that she had not mentioned the book, but now that she had, she would make the best of it. She drew herself up with dignity.

"It's a book; a very nice book. It says lots of things--that have come true."

"Where is that book? Let me see it, please."

With visible reluctance Billy got down from her perch on Bertram's knee, went to her desk and brought back the book.

Bertram regarded it frowningly, so frowningly that Billy hastened to its defense.

"And it's true--what it says in there, and what Aunt Hannah and Kate said. It _is_ different when they're hungry! You said yourself if I'd tend to my husband and my home a little more, and--"

Bertram looked up with unfeigned amazement.

"I said what?" he demanded.

In a voice shaken with emotion, Billy repeated the fateful words.

"I never--when did I say that?"

"The night Uncle William and I came home from--Pete's."

For a moment Bertram stared dumbly; then a shamed red swept to his forehead.

"Billy, _did_ I say that? I ought to be shot if I did. But, Billy, you said you'd forgiven me!"

"I did, dear--truly I did; but, don't you see?--it was true. I _hadn't_ tended to things. So I've been doing it since."

A sudden comprehension illuminated Bertram's face.

"Heavens, Billy! And is that why you haven't been anywhere, or done anything? Is that why Calderwell said to-day that you hadn't been with them anywhere, and that--Great Scott, Billy! Did you think I was such a selfish brute as that?"

"Oh, but when I was going with them I _was_ following the book--I thought," quavered Billy; and hurriedly she turned the leaves to a carefully marked pa.s.sage. "It's there--about the outside interests. See?

I _was_ trying to brush up against them, so that I wouldn't interfere with your Art. Then, when you accused me of gallivanting off with--"

But Bertram swept her back into his arms, and not for some minutes could Billy make a coherent speech again.

Then Bertram spoke.

"See here, Billy," he exploded, a little shakily, "if I could get you off somewhere on a desert island, where there weren't any Aunt Hannahs or Kates, or Talks to Young Wives, I think there'd be a chance to make you happy; but--"

"Oh, but there was truth in it," interrupted Billy, sitting erect again.

"I _didn't_ know how to run a house, and it was perfectly awful while we were having all those dreadful maids, one after the other; and no woman should be a wife who doesn't know--"