“Dear, dear, isn’t the Advancement of Woman delightful?” cried the girl with the eyeglasses. “After this, when we want to know anything, we needn’t go to the trouble of looking it up in the dictionary or the encyclopædia; we can just discuss it at the club, and—”
“Why do you bother with those horrid books? I never do,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “They are so heavy and always dusty, too. Now, I just ask the nearest man what I want to know. If he happens to be wrong, I can always cite my authority and it gives the next man a double pleasure in setting me right.”
“What a clever thing you are,” said the girl with the eyeglasses; “you always make me think of what somebody said about er—Juliet, I think: ‘To know her is a liberal education.’”
“Oh, that is nothing. Why, I know a Vassar girl who has studied Greek and all that sort of thing and she invariably misspells several simple words whenever she writes to a man, so he may think himself so much cleverer than her and—”
“And I know a girl who asks every man, the first time she meets him, to explain the Australian ballot system. You see, it is a thing they all have to know, so they—”
“Goodness me, I should think she would get awfully tired of the answer,” said the president.
“She does. She told me not long ago that she really must invent a new stock question, for she could hardly keep from yawning now, while—”
“Speaking of yawning,” broke in the brown-eyed blonde, “Teddy Crœsus doesn’t send Molly flowers or bonbons any more!”
“I don’t see what that has to do with yawning,” said the girl with the Roman nose.
“More than you may think, dear. You know Molly always asks a man if a premonition of danger has ever been the means of saving his life. She doesn’t ask it the first time they meet, but saves it for some special occasion. Well, one evening at a reception, Teddy seemed disposed to talk to Florence too much, and Molly asked him the question then, because she knew—”