“You mean they give you furiously to think? Well, that’s good.” “I’m not sure,” said Clare. “Since I began to think I have been very miserable.” “Oh, that will soon wear off,” said Madge Vernon briskly. “You’ll get used to it.” “It will always hurt,” said Clare. Madge Vernon smiled at her. “I made a habit of it.” “It’s best not to think,” said Clare. “It’s best to go on being stupid and self-satisfied.” Clare’s visitor was shocked. “Oh, not self-satisfied! That is intellectual death.” “There are other kinds of death,” said Clare. “Moral death.” Madge Vernon raised her eyebrows. “We must buck up and do things. That’s the law of life.” “I have nothing to do,” said Clare, in a pitiful way. “How strange! I have such a million things to do. My days aren’t long enough. I am always pottering about with one thing or another.” “What kind of things?” asked Clare wistfully. Madge Vernon gave her a cheerful little laugh. “For one thing, it’s a great joke having to earn one’s own living. The excitement of never knowing whether one can afford the next day’s meal! The joy of painting pictures--which the Royal Academy will inevitably reject. The horrible delight of burning them when they are rejected.... Besides, I am a public character, I am.” “Are you? How?” asked Clare. “A most notorious woman. I’m on the local Board of Guardians and all sorts of funny old committees for looking after everything and everybody.” “What do you do?” Clare asked the question as though some deep mystery lay in the answer. “Oh, I poke up the old stick-in-the-muds,” said Madge Vernon, “and stir up no end of jolly rows. I make them do things, too; and they hate it. Oh, how they hate it!” “What things, Madge?” “Why, attending to drains, and starving widows, and dead dogs, and imbecile children, and people ‘what won’t work,’ and people ‘what will’ but can’t.” Clare laughed at this description and then became sad again. “I envy you! I have nothing on earth to do, and my days are growing longer and longer, so that each one seems a year.” “Haven’t you any housework to do?” asked Madge. “Not since my husband could afford an extra servant.” Miss Vernon made an impatient little gesture. “Oh, those extra servants! They have ruined hundreds of happy homes.” “Well, we have only got one now,” said Clare. “The other left last night, because she couldn’t get on with my mother-in-law.” “They never can!” said Miss Vernon. “Anyhow, Herbert doesn’t think it ladylike for me to do housework.” Madge Vernon scoffed at the idea. “Ladylike! Oh, this suburban snobbishness! How I hate the damn thing! Forgive my bad language, won’t you?” “I like it,” said Clare. Miss Vernon continued her cross-examination. “Don’t you even make your own bed? It’s awfully healthy to turn a mattress and throw the pillows about.” “Herbert objects to my making beds,” said Clare. “Don’t you make the puddings or help in the washing up?”