"We could make baby an excuse," I said, "and never get out to the
club till very late--after dinner--and stay just for the dancing.
And we could get out of the dinner club and the theater bunch. Only,
we ought to have some fun."

"You can go to matinées, and tell me about them, so we can talk
intelligently. We'll say we can't leave the kid nights--"

"We can buy magazines and read up on plays. We'll talk well enough
if we do that, and people won't know we haven't been. Put down:
'Magazines for plays.'"

He did it quite seriously. Do we seem very amusing to you? So
anxious lest we should betray our economies--so impressed with our
social "position" and what people might think! It is funny enough to
me, looking back; but it was bitter business then.

I set myself to playing the devoted and absorbed young mother. But
it was a long, long time before it became the sweetest of realities.
I cried the first time I refused a bridge game to "stay with baby";
and I carried a sore heart those long spring afternoons when I
pushed his carriage conspicuously up and down the avenue while the
other women motored past me out for tea at the club. Yet those long
walks were the best thing that ever happened to me. I had time to
think, for one thing; and I gained splendid health, losing the
superfluous flesh I was beginning to carry, and the headaches that
usually came after days of lunching and bridge and dining.

I fell into the habit, too, of going around by the market, merely to
have an objective, and buying the day's supplies. The first month of