This FreedomHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
This Freedom
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
It all worked splendidly. Winged on the eager pinions of their
individual lives these two nested their joined life in a home that for
every inmate was a perfect home; perfect for a husband, perfect for a
wife, perfect for the babies, perfect for the servants. The peace of
every home in civilized society rests ultimately on the kitchen, and the
peace of half the homes known to Harry and to Rosalie was in constant
rupture by upheavals thence. Not so behind the gamboge door. Rosalie
always granted it to men that, as was commonly said, servants worked
better for men. Men kept out of the irrational creatures’ way; that was
about it. The conduct of her life gave her the like advantage. Giving
her orders before she left the house, she was out all day and never
unexpectedly in. Positively the servants welcomed her on her return at
five o’clock!
The babies, to whom then she flew, were with a perfect nurse. Harry had
helped in her appointment. She had come one evening, early in the life
of Huggo, when a change had to be made from the nurse who specialised
only up to the point then reached by Huggo, and she had presented
herself to them, seated together in Harry’s study, a short body, one
shape and a solid shape from her shoulders to her shoes, who announced
her name as Muffett.
“Miss Muffett, I hope,” said Harry gravely.
“Unmarried, sir,” said Muffett with equal gravity and with a sudden
drop and then recovery of her stature as though some one had knocked her
behind the knees.
“There’s nothing to do,” said Harry when she had gone, “but to buy her
a turret and engage her”; and there was nothing to do, when she was
installed, but enjoy the babies and delight in them just as a man enjoys
and delights in his tiny ones,--in the early mornings before Rosalie
left for her work, in the evenings when she returned home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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