ivinely,"
answered Jephson, shortly.

"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaughnassy, "I am astonished."

Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The
same?"

"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."

"Does _she_ give a reason?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."

There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought.
I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this inquiry.

That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with
promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as
their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they
been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons I
shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock. By
two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in its
hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five hundred of
them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild mob, and
as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them,
as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such
disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged to interfere;
and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast, and compelled,
by a force of constables specially told off for the purpose, to keep
their places and wait their proper turn.

At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."

"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
waiting _such_ a long time."

"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
'em, can you? Come earlier next time."

Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating