“Oh, it is a perfectly delightful one!” said the blue-eyed girl. “Man’s real attitude toward the Progress of Woman, and—”
“His real attitude is that of flight,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “he—”
“Don’t be flippant, dear, whatever you are,” said the president, gravely, “we have enough of that to endure from our masculine acquaintances. It seems to me that a man laughs at whatever he fails to understand, and then feels that he has replied to the argument.”
“Perhaps that is the reason that men laugh at so many jokes in which I can see nothing funny,” said the girl with the eyeglasses.
“No doubt of it,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “but, girls, never attempt to imitate them. I did once, and Annie—you know how obtuse she is—kept asking loudly what I was laughing at, and I couldn’t tell her. When a man had just made the remark that he was glad to find a girl with a keen sense of the ridiculous, too!”
“Just like Annie,” said the blue-eyed girl. “I sometimes wonder whether she is really obtuse or only malicious. You know how devoted Tommy Bonds is to music, don’t you? Well, Annie and I once accompanied him to a Thomas concert, and I wanted to make myself agreeable—”
“I hope you didn’t do it by conversing while the orchestra was playing,” said the president.
“Of course not, goosie. But I remembered that he always says a woman should be two things—sincere and fond of music. The soloist was a pianist, I can’t remember his name, but his hair was not at all remarkable. When he played an encore, Tommy leaned over to me, and said: ‘Isn’t it charming?’ and I replied, ‘Yes, I like it better every time I hear it; in fact, I often ask people to play it for me.’ I wish now that I hadn’t said that.”
“Why so?” asked the president, “it seems to me just the right thing to say.”
“But Annie leaned over asking, loudly, ‘What is the name of it?’ and, to my horror, Mr. Bonds said he didn’t know, and it was all so sudden that, to save my life, I couldn’t make up a name! In the silence which followed, some one in front of us was heard remarking that the encore was a composition by the pianist himself, and now played for the first time in public!”