he social columns of certain
morning newspapers. It is really wonderful what half-guineas will do
towards social advancement in these days! For a guinea one's presence can
be recorded at a dinner, or an at home, or one's departure from town can
be notified to the world in general in a paragraph all to one's self--a
paragraph which rubs shoulders with those concerning the highest in the
land. The snobbery of the "social column" would really be amusing were it
not so painfully apparent. A good press-agent will, for a fee, give one
as much publicity and newspaper popularity as that enjoyed by a duke, and
most amazing is it that such paragraphs are swallowed with keen avidity
by Suburbia.

The Leslies were an average specimen of the upper middle-class, who were
struggling frantically to get into a good set. The old man was bald,
pompous, and always wore gold pince-nez and a fancy waistcoat. He carried
his shop manners into his drawing-room, retaining his habit of rubbing
his hands in true shop-walker style when he wished to be polite to his
guests.

His wife was a loud-tongued and altogether impossible person, who, it was
said, had once served behind the counter in a small shop in Cardiff, but
who now regarded the poor workers in her husband's huge emporium as mere
money-making machines.

By dint of careful cultivation at bazaars and such-like charitable
functions she had scraped acquaintance with a few women of title, to whom
she referred in conversation as "dear Lady So and So, who said to me the
other day," or "as my friend Lady Violet always says."

She had buttonholed me at last, though I had endeavoured to escape her,
and was standing before me like a pouter-pigeon pluming herself and
endeavouring to be humorous at the expense of a very modest little
married woman who had been her guest that afternoon and had just left
after shaking my hand.

Women of Mrs. Leslie's stamp are perhaps the most evil-tongued of all.
They rise from obscurity, and finding wealth at their command, imagine
that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women
who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the
reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the
invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness.

At last I got rid of her, thanks to the arrival of an elegant young man,
the younger son of a well-known peer, to whom, of course, she was at once
all smiles, and, presently, I