You had
him hypnotized. You'd have to give up everything for it--all your social
duties, all our larks together. Oh, it's absurd! You, to spend all your
time doing menial work--scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten
dollars a week!"
"It isn't menial work," Rose insisted. "It's--apprentice work. After
I've been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I'll be able to
let Mrs. Ruston go and take _her_ job. I'll be really competent to take
care of my own children. I don't pretend I am now."
"I don't see why you can't do that as things are now. She'll let you
practise bathing them and things like that, and certainly no one would
object to your wheeling them out in the pram. But the nurse-maid would
be on hand in case ..."
"I'm to take it on then," said Rose, and her voice had a new ring in
it--the ring of scornful anger--"I'm to take it on as a sort of polite
sentimental amusement. I'm not to do any real work for them that depends
on me to get done. I'm not to be able to feel that, even in a
bottle-washing sort of way, I'm doing an indispensable service for them.
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