ust crazy" to meet you, and
heaps of nice things that make you pleased with yourself and ready to enjoy
your food. You are just going to say something civil in return, and get a
few words out, when your neighbour interrupts you with more nice things,
and stacks of questions, and remarks about herself, all rather
disconnected, and before you can speak again, the lady beyond, or even
across the table, has interpolated with a sentence beginning always like
this, "Now let me tell you something;" and long before she can get to the
end of that, the person at her side has interrupted her. And so it goes on.
It sounds as if I were telling you of another Mad Hatter's tea party,
Mamma, but it is not at all; and it is wonderful how much sense you can get
out of it, and what amusing and clever bright things they say, though at
the end you feel a little confused; and what with the smell of the
innumerable flowers and the steam heated rooms, and the cigarettes, I can't
think how they have wits enough left to play bridge all the afternoon, as
they do, with never a young man to wake them up. Of course it is amusing
for Octavia and me to see all this, as we are merely visitors, but fancy,
Mamma! doing it as a part of one's life! Dressing up and making oneself
splendid and attractive to meet only _women!_

They are not the least interested in politics or the pursuits of their
husbands or brothers, and hardly any of them have the duties we have to do,
like opening bazaars and giving away prizes and being heads of all sorts of
organisations, nor do they have quantities of tenants' welfare to look
after, or be responsible for anything. Of course they must pass the time
somehow, and they all have secretaries who take every sort of ordinary
trouble of notes and letters and things off their shoulders, so they ought
to be awfully happy, oughtn't they? But they often have nerves or some
imaginary disease or fad, and are frightfully restless, and Octavia says it
is because in the natural development of the female of any country, numbers
of these are really at the stage when they should be doing manual labour,
according to their ancestry, and so having nothing to occupy them and
living in every dreamed-of luxury, they get nerves instead. But I think it
is because they never have nice young men to play with, everyone being busy
working down town in the day time. We are told that even when the husbands
do come home before dinner they are too tired to