o tenacious of the right to entertain
Osric Dane.

The question of that lady's reception had for a month past profoundly
moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt
themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity
plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the
alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as
Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the
author of "The Wings of Death," no forebodings disturbed the conscious
adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. "The Wings
of Death" had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck's suggestion, been chosen as
the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and each member had
thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to appropriate whatever
sounded well in the comments of the others.

Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the opportunity; but it
was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club, Mrs. Roby
was a failure. "It all comes," as Miss Van Vluyck put it, "of accepting
a woman on a man's estimation." Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from
a prolonged sojourn in exotic lands--the other ladies no longer took
the trouble to remember where--had been heralded by the distinguished
biologist, Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever
met; and the members of the Lunch Club, impressed by an encomium
that carried the weight of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the
Professor's social sympathies would follow the line of his professional
bent, had seized the chance of annexing a biological member. Their
disillusionment was complete. At Miss Van Vluyck's first off-hand
mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby had confusedly murmured: "I know so
little about metres--" and after that painful betrayal of incompetence
she had prudently withdrawn from farther participation in the mental
gymnastics of the club.

"I suppose she flattered him," Miss Van Vluyck summed up--"or else it's
the way she does her hair."

The dimensions of Miss Van Vluyck's dining-room having restricted the
membership of the club to six, the nonconductiveness of one member was
a serious obstacle to the exchange of ideas, and some wonder had already
been expressed that Mrs. Roby should care to live, as it were, on the
intellectual bounty of the others. This feeling was increased by the
discovery that she had not yet read "The Wings of Death."