The ensuing week was principally devoted to unexpected payments for unexpected things debited to my account by Madame Hyacinthe. Some philosophic people declare that it is a pleasure to pay for what one has had and enjoyed. That may be true. I will not argue the question. I assert, however, that it is difficult to find pleasure in paying for what one has never had, and that somebody else has enjoyed. An adjacent ice-cream parlor sent me in a large bill for ice-cream sodas that had been served in my apartment, at the rate of two or three times a day, during the sojourn of the French ladies. A drug store plied me with an account for various items, the advantages of which we had never reaped. For ten days I was busy settling up. It was the "joy of surprise" with a vengeance. Madame had thoughtlessly omitted to clothe herself at my expense. A few tailor-made gowns and ruffled silk petticoats would have added to the joyous revelations. "When I read," said Letitia, "of the silly New York women who don't know what a home means, and who offer prizes to servants who keep their places, my blood boils. Prizes to servants who keep their places! The prizes should go to the poor housekeepers who are able to overcome their sense of repugnance sufficiently to admit these creatures into their houses, and keep them there." "The women who talk most about the servant question, my dear," I said sententiously, "are the over-dressed, underfed matrons you see at the lobster palaces, who live on one meal a day, which they take at a restaurant, and spend their mornings in curl-papers and wrappers." "What I can't understand," resumed Letitia reflectively, "is the total disappearance of what we read about as the dignity of labor. Surely, Archie, it has a dignity. Some people must work for the benefit of others. If everybody had to dust, and sweep, and sew, and cook for herself, what would become of all the graces of life, of literature, art, music? I don't see anything so disgraceful in housework. We can't all be equal, can we--except in theory? Why, when you see two people together for just five minutes, you can note the superiority of the one, and the inferiority of the other." I had no desire to be dragged into an economic discussion. My mind was not in a condition serene enough to grapple with it. I had just paid out nearly eleven dollars to the ice-cream and candy purveyor who had surreptitiously cooled Madame de Lyrolle's "innards." "I suppose," continued Letitia, "that the reason New York women look so much nicer than they are is that the poor things have no time to do anything for their own mental refinement. They must eat like paupers, live like laborers' wives, and rely for their only pleasure upon clothes and a nocturnal restaurant. Then they slink back to their joyless 'home' and go to a bed that they have, themselves, made." "Poor souls!" I sighed.