“Coming down to brass tacks on this money thing, Ferdy,” said Mrs. Wimple, “you're not the downy peach you picture in the ads. I'll tell the world you're not! You kid yourself, Ferdy. Some of your bloom has been removed, Ferdy. Don't go so far upstage when you speak to me about the dross the world calls gold. The reason we can't afford a maid now is because you got swell-headed and kicked over that perfectly good magazine job you used to have. You thought you were going to get more limelight and more money on the lecture platform. But you've been a flivver in the big time. Your message sounds better to a flock of women in somebody's sitting room full of shaded candles and samovars, with firelight on the antique junk, than it does in Carnegie Hall. You've got the voice for the big spaces all right, but the multitude doesn't get any loaves and fishes from you. Punk sticks and _nuances_ --the _intime_ stuff--that's your speed, Ferdy. I don't want to put any useless dents into your bean, but that message of yours has been hinted at by other messengers. 1 stick around home here and take care of the kids, and I've never let out a yell before. And you trot around to your soul fights and tea fests and feed your message to a bunch of dolled-up dames that don't even know you have a wife. I'm not jealous... you couldn't drag me into one of those perfumed literary dives by the hair ... I got fed up with that stuff years ago. But as long as we're without a maid because you won't stick to a steady job, you'll do your share of the rough stuff around the house. I'll say you will! You used to be a good sport about that sort of thing, Ferdy, but it looks to me as if you were getting spoiled rotten. You've had a rush of soul to the mouth, Ferdy. Those talcum-powder seances of yours have gone to your head. You take those orgies of refinement too seriously. You begin to look to me like you had a streak of yellow in you, Ferdy... and if I ever see it so plain I'm sure of it, I'll leave you flat. I'll quit you, Ferdy, twins and all.” “Quit, then!” cried Mr. Wimple. And then the harplike voice burst into song again, an offering rich with rage: “Woman! So help me all the gods, I'm through! Twins or no twins, Elinor Wimple, I'm through! By all the gods, I'll never wash another dish, Nor yet another set of underwear!” And Mr. Wimple, in his heat, brought down the wooden paddle upon the pile of dishes in the sink, in front of his wife. The crash of the broken china seemed to augment his rage, rather than relieve it, and he raised the paddle for a second blow. “Ferd!” cried his wife, and caught at the stick. Mr. Wimple, the aesthete, grabbed her by the arm and strove to loosen her grasp upon the paddle.