"Certainly," she said amiably, "I'll excuse you. You can't be squalid, but you _can_ be dusty. Personally, I'd sooner be squalid, as you call it, but tastes differ, as the old lady remarked when she kissed her cow. Thank goodness, I've removed a few of the evidences of neglect. I think I'll rest for a few minutes. You sit still, Letitia, and you, Mr. Archie, don't get fidgetty. The trouble to-day is that the average New York woman who gets married doesn't want cooking, or housekeeping, or children, or the comradeship of a man. She wants diamonds for her ears, silks for her back, furs for her shoulders. She'd sooner live in an apartment that has a palatial entrance, and dark, airless cubby-holes for rooms; she'd sooner go and dine at a _table d'hôte_ restaurant than order her own dinner at home; she'd sooner pant in impossible waists and flaunt herself before the world as some odious 'Gibson' freak, than stay at home in something loose, and have healthy children easily." "Aunt Julia!" cried Letitia, aghast. "You really mustn't--before Archie." "Please, Mrs. Dinsmore," I objected, "such things--before Letitia--" "Don't add prudery to your other follies," retorted this terrible old lady, "I hate it. What is, is; and we might as well talk about it. Somebody has said, Letitia (and it wasn't your friend Ovid, the chestnut), that decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence--which is clever. You see, I read occasionally, squalid though I be. It is a true remark. I hope you'll have children, but not until you know what to do with them, and are not as dependent upon a nurse as you are upon a cook. Then you would be treating your own children as badly as you now treat your own stomachs. Your poor stomachs!" Involuntarily I placed my hand on the lower part of my waistcoat. There was certainly a flatness there. Strangely enough, Letitia did the same--omitting of course the waistcoat. We were both so indignant with Aunt Julia, that this silent action probably took the place of insulting words. "Home is a thing that is going out of fashion in this city," Aunt Julia continued bitingly. "It is a place to sleep in, to get your letters at; a spot in which to blazon forth your name, for the compilers of the city directory. American women prefer to dine out, dance out, make merry out. They even like to get married--out. Probably they will have their children out, one of these days. There will be elegant caterers to expectant mothers. No, Letitia, you can't stop me. I intend to have my say. The situation confronts us. Let us face it, manfully or womanfully." "You talk as though we were trying to demolish the home, Aunt Julia," said Letitia, endeavoring to infuse an expression of indignation into her poor congested face. "We are doing our best. We are anxious to live in the house, and not out of it. What are we to do? We are unfortunate."