Cecily made determined efforts not to let her household weigh on her. She told herself again and again that there must be ways to manage. She interviewed nurses and cooks, bribed employment agencies, but even with all her effort her mind could never escape from her house and her babies. The little grudge against Dick that he could escape, that he could want, as he so often did want, gayety and people, wore deeper in her. CHAPTER XVIII Dick Harrison was R. G. Harrison in the Second National Bank Building. R. G. Harrison was increasingly important. He had started at twenty-five, looking after his dead father’s interests and fortune. At thirty-six he had taken his place among the young business men of the city who had made good and could contribute not only money, but also brains to the public benefit. He had been involved in various enterprises, all of them successful, but more and more he had withdrawn and concentrated lately on the mines in which Matthew Allenby and his company were interested. Dick and Matthew were constantly increasing their holdings, playing it together. Dick was director of the bank housed in the building where he had his office, and director of half a dozen companies; but his main interest was in the Lebanon Range mines. If Cecily felt that Dick only half knew the difficulties she had in her house, it did not occur to Dick to counter that she knew little of the press of things that weighed on him through his business day--interests, worries, decisions, definite things. Little wonder that the intangible “something” which troubled Cecily could not impress him as serious. Serious things were the next tax on the mines, the threatened difficulties with labor agitators, the money tightness in the country. The business of the world, the business that kept food in people’s mouths, provided homes and motors and jewels and luxuries--that was real. He was becoming a little prone to dismiss Cecily’s tendencies to be easily “hurt,” to object to his desire for amusement of one kind and another, on the general premise that “women are queer.” So he said to Matthew as they sat in his office one day after disposing of a host of details. “Women are queer.” “Original, aren’t you?” “Well, I’m just beginning to find out that it’s true.” “That remark,” commented Matthew, “always seemed to me not to be far from the vaudeville stuff about women--husband and wife fight stuff. It’s cheap cant. Women queer! Every one’s queer!” “So, why pick on women, eh?” “Exactly.” “Well, I’ll tell you why. With a man you know where you are. You size him up and you know how to deal with him. With women you can size up again and again; you think you’ve got it and then you find that just the thing you’ve done to please them is the thing that doesn’t please them.” “More and more like George Cohan. Why have you such a sudden discouraged interest in women, Dick?”