"I've half a mind," said the Woman of the World, "to give up
housekeeping altogether and go into an hotel. I don't like the
idea, but really servants are becoming impossible."
"It is very interesting," said the Minor Poet.
"I am glad you find it so!" snapped the Woman of the World.
"What is interesting?" I asked the Minor Poet.
"That the tendency of the age," he replied, "should be slowly but
surely driving us into the practical adoption of a social state that
for years we have been denouncing the Socialists for merely
suggesting. Everywhere the public-houses are multiplying, the
private dwellings diminishing."
"Can you wonder at it?" commented the Woman of the World. "You men
talk about 'the joys of home.' Some of you write poetry--generally
speaking, one of you who lives in chambers, and spends two-thirds of
his day at a club." We were sitting in the garden. The attention
of the Minor Poet became riveted upon the sunset. "'Ethel and I by
the fire.' Ethel never gets a chance of sitting by the fire. So
long as you are there, comfortable, you do not notice that she has
left the room to demand explanation why the drawing-room scuttle is
always filled with slack, and the best coal burnt in the kitchen
range.
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