d been got together, and the thing seemed to be
fairly launched.

"With good management and a little unobtrusive hard work, I think the
thing ought to be a success," said Reggie, and Reggie was one of those
people who are painstaking first and optimistic afterwards.

"There is one rock on which you will unfailingly come to grief, manage
you never so wisely," said Major Dagberry, cheerfully; "the women will
quarrel. Mind you," continued this prophet of disaster, "I don't say
that some of the men won't quarrel too, probably they will; but the women
are bound to. You can't prevent it; it's in the nature of the sex. The
hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world, in a volcanic sense. A woman
will endure discomforts, and make sacrifices, and go without things to an
heroic extent, but the one luxury she will not go without is her
quarrels. No matter where she may be, or how transient her appearance on
a scene, she will instal her feminine feuds as assuredly as a Frenchman
would concoct soup in the waste of the Arctic regions. At the
commencement of a sea voyage, before the male traveller knows half a
dozen of his fellow passengers by sight, the average woman will have
started a couple of enmities, and laid in material for one or two
more--provided, of course, that there are sufficient women aboard to
permit quarrelling in the plural. If there's no one else she will
quarrel with the stewardess. This experiment of yours is to run for six
months; in less than five weeks there will be war to the knife declaring
itself in half a dozen different directions."

"Oh, come, there are only eight women in the party; they won't pick
quarrels quite so soon as that," protested Reggie.

"They won't all originate quarrels, perhaps," conceded the Major, "but
they will all take sides, and just as Christmas is upon you, with its
conventions of peace and good will, you will find yourself in for a
glacial epoch of cold, unforgiving hostility, with an occasional Etna
flare of open warfare. You can't help it, old boy; but, at any rate, you
can't say you were not warned."

The first five weeks of the venture falsified Major Dagberry's prediction
and justified Reggie's optimism. There were, of course, occasional small
bickerings, and the existence of certain jealousies might be detected
below the surface of everyday intercourse; but, on the whole, the women-
folk got on remarkably well together. There was, however, a notable
exception.