And yet nobody else seemed to turn from it with loathing.
Nobody else seemed to perceive that this business of domesticity was not life itself, was at best the clumsy external machinery of life.

On the contrary, about half the adult population worshipped it as an exercise sacred and paramount, enlarging its importance and with positive gusto permitting it to monopolize their existence.

Nine-tenths of her mother's conversation was concerned with the business of domesticity--and withal Mrs.Lessways took the business more lightly than most! III There was an impatient knock at the front door,--rare phenomenon, but not unknown.
Mrs.Lessways cried out thickly from the folds of her flannel petticoat: "Hilda, just see who that is, will you ?...

knocking like that! Florrie can't come." And just as Hilda reached the front door, her mother opened the kitchen door wide, to view the troublesome disturber and to inform him, if as was probable he was exceeding his rights, that he would have done better to try the back door.
It was Mr.Cannon at the front door.
Hilda heard the kitchen door slammed to behind her, but the noise was like a hallucination in her brain.

She was staggered by the apparition of Mr.Cannon in the porch.