In Which Mary Writes of the Workaday World, and in Which Roger Writes of the Dreams of a Boy

In the Tower Rooms--June.

I have been working in the office for a week, and it has been the
hardest week of my life. But please don't think that I have any
regrets--it is only that the world has been so lovely outside, and that
I have been shut in.

I am beginning to understand that the woman in the home has a freedom
which she doesn't sufficiently value. She can run down-town in the
morning; or slip out in the afternoon, or put off until to-morrow
something which should have been done to-day. But men can't run out or
slip away or put off--no matter if the sun is shining, or the birds
singing, or the wind calling, or the open road leading to adventure.

Yet there are compensations, and I am trying to see them. I am trying
to live up to my theories. And I am sustained by the thought that at
last I am a wage-earner--independent of any one--capable of buying my
own bread and butter, though all masculine help should fail!

Aunt Isabelle is a dear, and so is Susan Jenks. And that's another
thing to think about. What will the wage-earning part of the world do,
when there are no home-keepers left? If it were not for Aunt Isabelle
and Susan, there wouldn't be any one to trail after me with cushions
for my tired back, and cold things for me to drink on hot days, and hot
things to drink on cool days.