In the old days, before the problem of the Eighth Year had arrived, the wives of men, the mothers of those very girls, kept themselves busy by hundreds of small duties. They made the beds, dusted the rooms, helped the servants in the kitchen, made a good many of their own clothes, mended them, altered them, cleaned the silver. But nowadays the wife of the professional man does none of these things if there is any escape from them. She keeps one servant at a time when her mother did without a servant. She keeps two servants as soon as her husband can afford an extra one, three servants if the house is large enough to hold them. Indeed, a rise in the social scale is immediately the excuse for an additional servant, and in the social status the exact financial prosperity of the middle-classes is reckoned by them according to the number of servants they keep. And whether it be two or three, the little snob wife sits in her drawing-room with idle hands, trying to kill time, getting tired of doing nothing, but proud of her laziness. And the snob husband encourages her in her laziness. He is proud of it, too. He would hate to think of his wife dusting, or cleaning, or washing up. He does not guess that this worship of his great god Snob is a devil’s worship, having devilish results for himself and her. The idea that women want work never enters his head. His whole ambition in life is to prevent his wife from working, not only when he is alive, but after he is dead. He insures himself heavily and at the cost of a great financial strain upon his resources in order that “if anything happens” his wife, even then, need not raise her little finger to do any work. But something “happens” before he is dead. The woman revolts from the evil spell of her laziness. She finds some work for her idle hands to do--good work or bad. CHAPTER XII