Mrs. Hunt Mortimer looked at the clock.
‘I am very sorry to have to go,’ said she, ‘but really I have no choice in the matter. Just as we were getting on so nicely—it is really most vexatious. You’ll come to my house next Wednesday, Mrs. Crosse, won’t you? And you also, Mrs. Beecher. Good-bye, and thanks for such a pleasant afternoon!’
But her skirts had hardly ceased to rustle in the passage before the Browning Society had been dissolved by a two-thirds’ vote of the total membership.
‘What is the use?’ cried Mrs. Beecher. ‘Two lines have positively made my head ache, and there are two volumes.’
‘We must change our poet.’
‘His verbosity!’ cried Mrs. Beecher.
‘His Setebosity!’ cried Maude.
‘And dear Mrs. Hunt Mortimer pretending to like him! Shall we propose Tennyson next week?’
‘It would be far better.’
‘But Tennyson is quite simple, is he not?’