on is
not a question of lovely and accomplished females, but of dowdies. The
average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming
anything else. She hasnt any charm; and she has no high notes except
when shes giving her husband a piece of her mind, or calling down the
street for one of the children.

LADY CORINTHIA. How disgusting!

MITCHENER. Somebody must do the dowdy work! If we had to choose between
pitching all the dowdies into the Thames and pitching all the lovely and
accomplished women, the lovely ones would have to go.

LADY CORINTHIA. And if you had to do without Wagner's music or do
without your breakfast, you would do without Wagner. Pray does that make
eggs and bacon more precious than music, or the butcher and baker better
than the poet and philosopher? The scullery may be more necessary to our
bare existence than the cathedral. Even humbler apartments might make
the same claim. But which is the more essential to the higher life?

MITCHENER. Your arguments are so devilishly ingenious that I feel
convinced you got them out of some confounded book. Mine--such as they
are--are my own. I imagine its something like this. There is an old
saying that if you take care of the pence, the pounds will take care
of themselves. Well, perhaps if we take care of the dowdies and the
butchers and the bakers, the beauties and the bigwigs will take care of
themselves. (Rising and facing her determinedly.) Anyhow, I dont want to
have things arranged for me by Wagner. Im not Wagner. How does he know
where the shoe pinches me? How do you know where the shoe pinches your
washerwoman?--you and your high F in alt. How are you to know when you
havent made her comfortable unless she has a vote? Do you want her to
come and break your windows?

LADY CORINTHIA. Am I to understand that General Mitchener is a democrat
and a suffraget?

MITCHENER. Yes: you have converted me--you and Mrs. Banger.

LADY CORINTHIA. Farewell, creature. (Balsquith enters hurriedly.) Mr.
Balsquith: I am going to wait on General Sandstone. He at least is an
officer and a gentleman. (She sails out.)

BALSQUITH. Mitchener: the game is up.

MITCHENER. What do you mean?

BALSQUITH. The strain is too much for the Cabinet. The old Liberal
and Unionist Free Traders declare that if they are defeated on their
resolution to invite tenders from private contractors for carrying on
the Army and Navy, they will go solid for votes for women as the