"Yes, honey, yes," interrupted David, "I know just how it was, and it was my fault, not yours. I ought to have asked you what you wanted, instead of takin' things for granted. Yes, if it's anybody's fault, it's mine. But what's the use in blamin' anybody? My doctrine is that when a thing _has_ happened, instead of blamin' ourselves or anybody else, we just ought to conclude that it _had_ to happen, and then make the best of it. This house is built; it's ours; we're in it; we don't like it; and now what are we going to do about it?" Sarah's face clouded at once. She and David were of one mind, but things were not "all right", for still the burden of unaccustomed wealth and luxury weighed upon her, and David's question brought her face to face with the old troubles. "Oh! I don't know," she said wearily. "If we just hadn't left our little cottage!" "It was that architect fellow's fault, my buildin' this house," said David ruefully. "He was a young man just startin' out in the world, and I thought I'd give him a helpin' hand. And then it didn't look right for people with the income we've got to live in a four-room cottage in Millville." "I don't care how it looked," said Sarah fretfully, "we were in our right place there, and we're out of place here. When we lived in Millville, I'd get up in the morning, and I knew just exactly what I'd have to do, and I knew I could do whatever I had to do. But now--" She made a gesture of unutterable despair--"Why, I hate to open my eyes, I hate to get up, I hate to think there's another day before me, for I'm certain there'll be things to do that I never did before, and don't know how to do and don't want to do, even if I knew how. People come to see me and they talk about things I never heard of, and ask me to do things I can't do, and I feel just exactly as if I was caught in some kind of a cage and couldn't get out. There was that Mrs. Emerson--she wanted me to join a club she belongs to. She said it used to be a literary club, but that they'd changed their plans, and, instead of writin' papers, they'd decided to do civic work." She paused in her passionate confession and turned abruptly to David with a look of self-scorn that was tragic in its intensity. "Do you know what 'civic work' is, David?" David did not answer at once. "Why, no, Sarah, I can't say I do," he said cautiously. "It seems to me I've seen that word somewhere, and maybe I could think up what it means, if you'd give me time to--" Sarah cut him short. "You don't know what that word means, David, and neither do I," she said with studied calmness. David was genuinely puzzled by Sarah's evident distress over so unimportant a circumstance as the meaning of a word. "Honey," he said tenderly, "I'll go right down town and buy you a dictionary, so you can find out what that word means. But what difference does it make, anyhow?"