Dr. Hearthside is socially inclined; he likes to go out and to receive friends at home. It is professionally beneficial, and it is amusing. He had hoped his wife would have been a useful aid in this matter, for when he married her she sang charmingly, and was quite an acquisition at social gatherings. But she had found that her husband took interest in her musical talent merely from the social _kudos_ he derived from the possession of an accomplished wife. He only asked her to sing when they were in company, never when they were alone—then he had always work to do, which music would only interrupt. So she has ceased to cultivate her singing; her voice became weaker after the birth of her babies, and now she only cares that it is strong enough to sing lullabies. And with the lessening interest in the artistic pleasures and emotional joys which had filled her girlhood comes an increase of interest in all the petty and prosy details of domestic life. She has gradually grown to think of nothing but her children, her husband’s creature comforts, and her house. With a numerous family—for the getting and rearing of children, and the keeping them healthy and clean, has become the ruling passion of her life—economic considerations have become necessary in the conduct of the household, and questions of housekeeping expenditure have now more interest for her than the title of the last new song. She knows the prices of butcher’s-meat, of groceries, of everything, and will talk about them; she will converse on servants by the hour, and so particular is she in regulating her household that she will visit the kitchen continually, with the result that she is obliged to change her servants much more frequently than her acquaintances of less domestic habits. But she has now become chronically domestic, and the effect is at times very trying, especially to her husband. She instinctively passes her hand over the banisters as she goes downstairs, to see that they are clean. She insists on putting up the clean curtains in the drawing-room herself, just at an hour, too, when the De Brownes are likely to call; and she always keeps a duster in the chiffonier for special use at socially inopportune moments. But, worst of all, she has become dowdy in her dress, and only cares that the children shall look nice.