"
"Oh, dear Mrs. Le Geyt," one of her visitors said with effusion,
from beneath a nodding bonnet--she was the wife of a rural dean
from Staffordshire--"EVERYBODY is agreed that YOUR social duties are
performed to a marvel. They are the envy of Kensington. We all of us
wonder, indeed, how one woman can find time for all of it!"
Our hostess looked pleased. "Well, yes," she answered, gazing down
at her fawn-coloured dress with a half-suppressed smile of
self-satisfaction, "I flatter myself I CAN get through about as much
work in a day as anybody!" Her eye wandered round her rooms with a
modest air of placid self-approval which was almost comic. Everything in
them was as well-kept and as well-polished as good servants, thoroughly
drilled, could make it. Not a stain or a speck anywhere. A miracle of
neatness. Indeed, when I carelessly drew the Norwegian dagger from its
scabbard, as we waited for lunch, and found that it stuck in the sheath,
I almost started to discover that rust could intrude into that orderly
household.
I recollected then how Hilda Wade had pointed out to me during those six
months at St. Nathaniel's that the women whose husbands assaulted them
were almost always "notable housewives," as they say in America--good
souls who prided themselves not a little on their skill in management.
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