"Three years ago this Winter," says she, "only three short years ago, every minute of the world that Russell had free, he wanted to spend with me. That Winter before we were married, do you suppose that anybody--_any_body could have got him to play billiards with him if he could have been with me?" I thought it over. "Well," I says, "no. Likely not. But then, you see, he couldn't be with you every evening--and that just naturally give him some nights off." "'Some nights off,'" she says. "Oh, if you think _that_ is the way he looks at it--There is no way in this world that I would rather spend my evenings," she says, "than to sit here with my husband." "Yes," I says, "I s'pose that's true. I s'pose that's true of most wives. And it's something they've got to get over thinking is so important." She gasped. "Get over--" she says. "Then," says she, "they'll have to get over loving their husbands." "Oh, dear, no, they won't--no, they won't," says I. "But they'll have to get over thinking that selfishness is love--for one thing. Most folks get them awful mixed--I've noticed that." But she broke down again, and was sobbing on the arm of the chair. "To think," she says over, "that now it'll never, never be the same again. From now on we're going to be just like other married folks!" That seemed to me a real amazing thing to say, but I saw there wasn't any use talking to her, so I just let her cry till it was time to go and feed the baby. And then she sat nursing him, and breathing long, sobbing breaths--and once I heard her say, "Poor, poor little Mother's boy!" with all the accent on the relationship. I walked back into the middle of the long, soft, wine-colored room, trying to think if I s'posed I'd got so old that I couldn't help in a thing like this, for I have a notion that there is nothing whatever that gets the matter that you can't help some way if you're in the neighborhood of it. Delia was just shutting the outside door of the apartment. And she came trotting in with her little, formal, front-door air. "Two ladies to see you, Miss Marsh," she says. "Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb." No sooner said than heard, and I flew to the door, all of a tremble. "For the land and forevermore," says I. "Where from and what for?" There they stood in the doorway, dressed, I see at first glance, in the very best they'd got. Mis' Holcomb, that is the most backward-feeling of any of our women, was a step behind Mis' Toplady, and had hold of her arm. And Mis' Toplady was kind of tiptoeing and looking round cautious, to see if something not named yet was all right. "There ain't any company, is there?" she says, in a part-whisper. "No," says I, "not a soul. Come on in." "Well," says she, relaxing up on her bones, "I asked the girl, and she says she'd see. What's the use of _being_ a hired girl if you don't know who you've let in?"