Part Three Service Chapter 7

Every cent must be counted in these days. Susan and Billy laughed long afterward to remember that on many a Sunday they walked over to the little General Post Office in Mission Street, hoping for a subscription or two in the mail, to fan the dying fires of the "Protest" for a few more days. Better times came; the little sheet struck roots, carried a modest advertisement or two, and a woman's column under the heading "Mary Jane's Letter" whose claims kept the editor's wife far too busy.

As in the early days of her marriage all the women of the world had been simply classified as wives or not wives, so now Susan saw no distinction except that of motherhood or childlessness. When she lay sick, feverish and confused, in the first hours that followed the arrival of her first-born, she found her problem no longer that of the individual, no longer the question merely of little Martin's crib and care and impending school and college expenses. It was the great burden of the mothers of the world that Susan took upon her shoulders. Why so much strangeness and pain, why such ignorance of rules and needs, she wondered. She lay thinking of tired women, nervous women, women hanging over midnight demands of colic and croup, women catching the little forms back from the treacherous open window, and snatching away the dangerous bottle from little hands---!