Idle Wives Author:James Oppenheim General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1914 Original Publisher: The Century Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can... more » select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV A FIRST STEP EVERY mother knows about that fifteen minutes of the fairies, but sometimes a cog slips and where are those delicate presences? Anne, high up over Riverside Drive, did not see the enchanting sprites often. Not because she failed in love for her little ones, nor they for her. Rather for mechanical reasons. There was, for instance, the German governess, Miss Alice, exceedingly capable, who had arranged a routine for the children which left little room for go-to- sleep fun; and as the doctor told Anne that the youngsters were healthy and were being brought up in a soundly scientific manner, it would have been folly (would it not?) to have interfered too much. Besides, Miss Alice would have resented the intrusion; and if Miss Alice left, where could Anne find another such faithful servant? Servants were hard to get for some strange reason. In fact, the poorest shop-girl felt herself the equal of -- well, anybody. What were things comingto, anyway! So said Anne's friends, though Anne did n't give a rap either way. A more searching reason was that the children seemed to care more for Miss Alice than they did for their mother. This hurt Anne in secret, -- there were lonely night-hours when she wept over it! -- but she did little to recapture the small wanderers. Possibly she did not realize how lovable she was, what a warmth of magnetism radiated from her, and how easily she could influence people. She did not know, and worse, she did not care. No, she cared for little these days: her spirit was as a wind that blew her to and fro; and that very n...« less