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| Woman's Home Companion August 1926 |
A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.
'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter
Part I
The
Reverend Stephen Hopkins Chapin was passing through the kitchen. It
seemed to his wife that he was always passing through the kitchen and stopping
to make suggestions on the way. Today he noted the confusion of utensils
on the table, the two sweet-smelling brown layers of cooling cake, the gas
stove burning full-head and the moist beads on his wife's forehead as she
stepped quickly around in the pantry.
"I
should think," he commented, "You would plan to get our cooking done
in the forenoon when it is cooler and not bake in the very hottest part of the
day."
"I
do plan, but what do you suppose happens to a plan when old Mrs. Whipple comes
and stays an hour and a half? She wanted to see you, but I told her you
were preparing your prayer-meeting topic, so she stayed on with me. Then
that agent came and talked and talked and the telephone has rung every five
minutes all day with somebody asking a question about the church sale."
"Of
course everyone is liable to have interruptions; you have to allow for them
when you plan your work."
It
was on the tip of her tongue to retort, "You don't have them because I
save you," but she kept the words back. She did not want to say
anything that might upset him, because Aunt Libby was coming the next day,
Thursday, to stay over Sunday which was also the Fourth, and she wanted Aunt
Libby to have a pleasant visit.
So,
she quietly dodged around him as he stood in her path to the oven, wiped her
fair flushed face and only answered placatingly, "I'll be through here in
a little while,” hoping he would move on.
The
Reverend Chapin held his ground in the middle of the floor. He was
unusually tall, a slender graceful figure topped by a sleek black head a trifle
too small for his height. His face was always white and his regular
features were dominated by large dark blue eyes which ran the whole gamut of
expression from vague vacuity, when he was dreaming out some theory, to the
hardness of agate when he was opposed. Opposition rarely occurred because
he had an almost hypnotic way of making people believe that he was right.
However, the effects of hypnotism are not permanent and after eleven
years of married life Isabel Chapin was well out from under the spell.
She knew that quiet frequently Stephen was wrong, but she kept that
knowledge to herself.
"The
trouble with you," went on Stephen, the omniscient, "is that you lack
system. If you worked with more system, you would not get so far
behind."
Her
mind leaped to his own system, which he never seemed to get perfected.
When he first came to Rockton he had made a complete card catalogue of
his parishioners, their families and addresses, so that in the matter of calls
he might deal all in exact impartiality, but unfortunately the A's had not
grouped themselves into one neighborhood; they were scattered all over the
village. When he went to see Mrs. Adams it seemed very foolish not to
call upon Mrs. Minot, who lived next door. Besides, Mrs. Minot might feel
hurt. The sensible thing was to call on both, but it worked havoc with
the system. Some day he was going to do the whole thing over by districts
and try that, but he had not got around to it yet.
"Housework
is different every day," argued Isabel. It doesn't seem to fit into
a system. You see, you are baking on one day and mending on the next and
the interruptions are never twice alike; some take more time and some
less."
She
stopped, realizing that she had tried, quite futilely, to explain this to him
at least once a week for a long time. She might as well save her breath.
She
might indeed, for he was not half listening.
(To
be continued....)
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