Despite the fastidiousness of her housekeeping, Saxon, once she had systematized it, found time and to spare on her hands. Especially during the periods in which her husband carried his lunch and there was no midday meal to prepare, she had a number of hours each day to herself. Trained for years to the routine of factory and laundry work, she could not this unaccustomed idleness. She could not bear to sit and do nothing, while she could not pay calls on her girlhood friends, for they still worked in factory and laundry. Nor was she acquainted with the wives of the neighborhood, save for one strange old woman who lived in the house next door and with whom Saxon had exchanged snatches of conversation over the backyard division fence.  
One time-consuming diversion of which Saxon took advantage was free and baths. In the and in Sarah's house she had been used to but one bath a week. As she grew to womanhood she had attempted more frequent baths. But the effort proved , arousing, first, Sarah's derision, and next, her . Sarah had crystallized in the era of the weekly Saturday night bath, and any increase in this function was regarded by her as putting on airs and as an insinuation against her own cleanliness. Also, it was an of fuel, and occasioned extra towels in the family wash. But now, in Billy's house, with her own stove, her own tub and towels and soap, and no one to say her , Saxon was guilty of a daily orgy. True, it was only a common washtub that she placed on the kitchen floor and filled by hand; but it was a luxury that had taken her twenty-four years to achieve. It was from the strange woman next door that Saxon received a hint, dropped in casual conversation, of what proved the culminating joy of bathing. A simple thing—a few drops of druggist's ammonia in the water; but Saxon had never heard of it before.
 
She was to learn much from the strange woman. The acquaintance had begun one day when Saxon, in the back yard, was hanging out a couple of corset covers and several pieces of her finest undergarments. The woman leaning on the rail of her back porch, had caught her eye, and nodded, as it seemed to Saxon, half to her and half to the underlinen on the line.
 
“You're newly married, aren't you?” the woman asked. “I'm Mrs. Higgins. I prefer my first name, which is Mercedes.”
 
“And I'm Mrs. Roberts,” Saxon replied, thrilling to the newness of the designation on her tongue. “My first name is Saxon.”
 
“Strange name for a Yankee woman,” the other commented.
 
“Oh, but I'm not Yankee,” Saxon exclaimed. “I'm Californian.”
 
“La la,” laughed Mercedes Higgins. “I forgot I was in America. In other lands all Americans are called Yankees. It is true that you are newly married?”
 
Saxon nodded with a happy sigh. Mercedes sighed, too.
 
“Oh, you happy, soft, beautiful young thing. I could envy you to hatred—you with all the man-world ripe to be twisted about your pretty little fingers. And you don't realize your fortune. No one does until it's too late.”
 
Saxon was puzzled and disturbed, though she answered readily:
 
“Oh, but I do know how lucky I am. I have the finest man in the world.”
 
Mercedes Higgins sighed again and changed the subject. She nodded her head at the garments.
 
“I see you like pretty things. It is good for a young woman. They're the bait for men—half the weapons in the battle. They win men, and they hold men—” She broke off to demand almost fiercely: “And you, you would keep your husband?—always, always—if you can?”
 
“I intend to. I will make him love me always and always.”
 
Saxon ceased, troubled and surprised that she should be so intimate with a stranger.
 
“'Tis a queer thing, this love of men,” Mercedes said. “And a failing of all women is it to believe they know men like books. And with breaking hearts, die they do, most women, out of their ignorance of men and still foolishly believing they know all about them. Oh, la la, the little fools. And so you say, little new-married woman, that you will make your man love you always and always? And so they all say it, knowing men and the queerness of men's love the way they think they do. Easier it is to win the capital prize in the Little Louisiana, but the little new-married women never know it until too late. But you—you have begun well. Stay by your pretties and your looks. 'Twas so you won your man, 'tis so you'll hold him. But that is not all. Some time I will talk with you and tell what few women trouble to know, what few women ever come to know.—Saxon!—'tis a strong, handsome name for a woman. But you don't look it. Oh, I've watched you. French you are, with a Frenchiness beyond dispute. Tell Mr. Roberts I congratulate him on his good taste.”
 
She paused, her hand on the knob of her kitchen door.
 
“And come and see me some time. You will never be sorry. I can teach you much. Come in the afternoon. My man is night watchman in the yards and sleeps of mornings. He's sleeping now.”
 
Saxon went into the house puzzling and pondering. Anything but ordinary was this lean, dark-skinned woman, with the face as if in great heats, and the eyes, large and black, that flashed and flamed with advertisement of an unquenched inner . Old she was—Saxon caught herself debating anywhere between fifty and seventy; and her hair, which had once been blackest black, was with gray. Especially noteworthy to Saxon was her speech. Good English it was, better than that to which Saxon was accustomed. Yet the woman was not American. On the other hand, she had no perceptible accent. Rather were her words touched by a foreignness so that Saxon could not nor place it.
 
“Uh, huh,” Billy said, when she had told him that evening of the day's event. “So SHE'S Mrs. Higgins? He's a watchman. He's got only one arm. Old Higgins an' her—a funny bunch, the two of them. The people's scared of her—some of 'em. The Dagoes an' some of the old Irish thinks she's a witch. Won't have a thing to do with her. Bert was tellin' me about it. Why, Saxon, d'ye know, some of 'em believe if she was to get mad at 'em, or didn't like their mugs, or anything, that all she's got to do is look at 'em an' they'll curl up their toes an' . One of the fellows that works at the stable—you've seen 'm—Henderson—he lives around the corner on Fifth—he says she's bughouse.”
 
“Oh, I don't know,” Saxon defended her new acquaintance. “She may be crazy, but she says the same thing you're always saying. She says my form is not American but French.”
 
“Then I take my hat off to her,” Billy responded. “No wheels in her head if she says that. Take it from me, she's a wise gazabo.”
 
“And she speaks good English, Billy, like a school teacher, like what I guess my mother used to speak. She's educated.”
 
“She ain't no fool, or she wouldn't a-sized you up the way she did.”
 
“She told me to congratulate you on your good taste in marrying me,” Saxon laughed.
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