“Because you have irritated me with your everlasting Mr. Rogers,” retorted Barbara. She examined, nevertheless, somewhat dejectedly, the marks of her nails in her palms. “In the morning, for instance, when I came down to breakfast there was the mail. Two dinner invitations and an afternoon tea; two sets of wedding-cards, and a notice of a lecture by Miss Clara Hatheway on the relative condition of primary schools here and abroad; requests for subscriptions to the new Cancer Hospital and the Children’s Fresh Air and Vacation Fund; an advertisement of an after-holiday sale of boys’ and girls’ clothes at Halliday’s; a note from Mrs. James Green asking particulars regarding our last cook, and a letter from the President of my Woman’s Club notifying me that I was expected to talk to them at the next meeting on the arguments in favor of and against the ownership by cities and towns of gas and water-works. All these had to be answered, noted, or considered. Then I had to interview the cook and the butcher and the grocer about the dinner, give orders that a button should be sewn on one pair of your trousers and a stain removed from another, and give directions to the chore-man to oil the lock of the front-door, and tell him to go post-haste for the plumber to extract the blotting-paper which the children yesterday stuffed down the drain-pipe in the bath-tub, so that the water could not escape. Then I had to sit down and read the newspaper. Not because I had time, or wished to, but to make sure that there was nothing in it which you could accuse me of not having read. After this I dressed to go out. I stopped at the florist’s to order some roses for Mrs. Julius Cæsar, whose mother is dead; at Hapgood & Wales’s and at Jones’s for cotton-batting, hooks and eyes, and three yards of ribbon; at Belcher’s for an umbrella to replace mine, which you left in the cable-cars, and at the library to select something to read. I arrived home breathless for the children’s dinner, and immediately afterward I dressed and went to the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Club, stopping on the way to inquire if Mrs. Wilson’s little boy were better. We started by discussing a proposed change in our Constitution regarding the number of black-balls necessary to exclude a candidate, and drifted off on to ‘Trilby.’ It was nearly five when I got away, and as I felt it on my conscience to go both to Mrs. Southwick’s and Mrs. Williams’s teas, I made my appearance at each for a few minutes, but managed to slip away so as to be at home at six. When you came in I had just been reading to the children and showing them about their lessons. Now I have only just time to dress for dinner, for we dine at the Gregory Browns, at half-past seven. We ought to go later to the reception at Mrs. Hollis’s--it is her last of three and we haven’t been yet--but I suppose you will say you are too tired. There! will you tell me when I could have found time to lie down for an hour to-day?”