“Just like the rest of you.”
“Yes, just like the rest of us; that’s the trouble. And that makes it so hard sometimes. I wanted Mrs. Trimwood to read her paper on ‘Children’s Playgrounds’ at the meeting to-day—it was my committee’s day—and she could read it only at the very last minute, because she wanted to read it at the Pocahontas first.”
“What was the subject of your meeting to-day?”
“Well, we have to be dreadfully careful not to frighten people off. I announced it as ‘The Education of Little Children.’ That sounded well, and there was a good attendance. Of course there wouldn’t have been a handful if we had said ‘Kindergartens.’ You know they are a little tired of that.”
I was staring mutely into my cup.
“Oh, a man’s life is so simple!” she went on. “A man’s club jogs along with about the same membership year after year. With us it is different. Women form a club in a great thrill. They swear, like the soldiers, to fight together until they are all dead, wounded, or promoted. But things change. There are losses, not merely by death and marriage, but by the readjustment of enthusiasms. Take Mrs. Montreville. She was a good member of the Phidias until she joined the Breathing Class. She hasn’t time for anything now but breathing. It is much the same with Mrs. Farlowe. She took up with the Relaxing Club. You know how those relaxers go in for things. Poor woman! I never saw her look so drawn and tired as she has since she went into that. Mrs. Pellmore was sure that nothing would lure her from the Dames. But some one kidnapped her into the Ibsen Club, where they have the most charming times over heredity and microbes, and of course she has no room for us now.”
“I can see,” I said, “that this might make things very difficult.”
“Difficult! Why, the Progressive Woman is a perfect blur. There was a time when all clubs looked alike to women. Nowadays we have become discriminating and there is no peace. The competition is frightful. It is no longer a matter of wafers. You can’t lure them with things to eat. They want sensations.”
“It really is too bad,” I said. “You will have to organize a trust and fight these yellow clubs.”