Miles was approaching her own 35th birthday and may have been thinking of her own condition as "toil-worn" mother of four. Cf. her description of a country dance in a diary entry of August 1, 1914:

But not every one on the floor was a maid or a laddie. Lou Rogers and his wife were among the most buoyant, the most graceful. In Callie's peachy cheeks the dimples came and went fetchingly as she swung through the maze; and Callie is at least as old as I am. In all that gathering she was perhaps the only woman of 35 who did not look at least ten years older.

Why?

Because.

One would look in vain for a babe of hers among the groups along the wall: that is why. I looked at her, erect, glowing, gliding; thick-haired; with rich color and perfect teeth. I looked at the drooping, sallow, overworked, underfed matrons of her age around the benches, half buried in heaps of drowsy noddles; and I wanted madly to call a hunger strike against child-bearing, until civilization ceases to penalize motherhood. (Diary 10)