did a doll.

"If a woman is attractive and beautiful," the lady went
on, "so much the better." (She had no intention of letting
go of the doll business entirely.) "But surely you men
ought to value us as something more than mere dolls?"

She might have pursued the topic, but at this moment the
Smooth Gentleman, who made a rule of standing in all
round, and had broken into a side conversation with the
Silent Host, was overheard to say something about women's
sense of humour.

The table was in a turmoil in a moment, three of the
ladies speaking at once. To deny a woman's sense of humour
is the last form of social insult.

"I entirely disagree with you," said the Chief Lady Guest,
speaking very severely. "I know it from my own case, from
my own sense of humour and from observation. Last week,
for example, we measured no less than seventy-five factory
girls--"

"Well, I'm sure," said the Lady-with-the-Bust, "I don't
know what men mean by our not having a sense of humour.
I'm sure I have. I know I went last week to a vaudeville,
and I just laughed all through. Of course I can't read
Mark Twain, or anything like that, but then I don't call
that funny, do you?" she concluded, turning to the Hostess.

But the Hostess, feeling somehow that the ground was
dangerous, had already risen, and in a moment more the
ladies had floated out of the room and upstairs to the
drawing-room, where they spread themselves about in easy
chairs in billows of pretty coloured silk.

"How charming it is," the Chief Lady Guest began, "to
find men coming so entirely to our point of view! Do you
know it was so delightful to-night: I hardly heard a word
of dissent or contradiction."

Thus they talked; except the Soft Lady, who had slipped
into a seat by herself with an album over her knees, and
with an empty chair on either side of her. There she
waited.

Meantime, down below, the men had shifted into chairs to
one end of the table and the Heavy Host was shoving cigars
at them, thick as ropes, and passing the port wine, with
his big fist round the neck of the decanter. But for his
success in life he could have had a place as a bar tender
anywhere.

None of them spoke till the cigars were well alight.

Then the Host said very deliberately, taking each word
at his leisure, with smoke in between:

"Of course--this--suffrage business--"

"Tommyrot!" exclaimed the Smooth Gentleman, with great
alacrity, his mask entirely laid aside.