Mrs. Balfame went up to bed, serene once more in the belief that her future was her own, unclouded, full of attractive possibilities for a woman of her position and intellectual attainments. She made up her mind to take a really deep course of reading, so that the most spiteful should not call her superficial; moreover, she had been conscious more than once of certain mental dissatisfactions, of uneasy vacancies in a mind sufficiently awake to begin to realise the cheapness of its furnishings. Perhaps she would take a course in history at Columbia, another in psychology. As she put herself into a sturdy cotton night-gown and then brushed back her hair from a rather large forehead before braiding it severely for the night, she realised dimly that that way happiness might lie, that the pleasures of the intellectual life might be very great indeed. She wished regretfully that she could have been brilliantly educated in her youth. In that case she would not have married a man who would incite any spirited woman to seek the summary release, but would be to-day the wife of a judge, perhaps--some fine fellow who had showed the early promise that Dwight Rush must have done. If she could attract one man like that, at the age of forty-two, she could have had a dozen in her train when young if she had had the sense to appreciate them. But she was philosophical, and it was not her way to quarrel very deeply with herself or with life. Her long braids were as evenly plaited as ever. She sank into sleep, thinking of the disagreeable necessity of making the kitchen fire in the morning and cooking her own breakfast. Frieda of course would be gone. CHAPTER XVII The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the back stairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usual appearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered with a large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Frieda slicing potatoes. "Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself. "I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continued evenly. "You have had so much to do of late." Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have done that before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by the dinner washed." "Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too. I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast." "Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I get up by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then I make the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. Then I make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee--" "I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might make the coffee at once." "Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task. "But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."