MRS. TILSBURY. No, that was the trouble. I haven’t any ancestors. I wouldn’t have wanted to use my husband’s if I had had any of my own, but it wasn’t any use.
MRS. BROWN. Well, if that is all they said at the meeting I think I passed a more profitable afternoon. See this purse that I won as a prize at the Bridge party.
MRS. TILSBURY. O, what a beauty! I do wish I could have gone. It is just what I want. Generally, Bridge prizes are some old thing that go from house to house as rapidly as a servant girl. Those tiresome suffrage meetings take up all my time. I never have a chance to do anything I like.
MRS. BROWN. Why do you go to them? I never do. I don’t want to vote, there are so many other things that are more amusing.
MRS. TILSBURY. I go with Mildred, she is so interested in Woman’s Suffrage.
MRS. BROWN. Well, you are a good—I don’t even like to say the word. It would be such a misnomer in your case.
MRS. TILSBURY. Stepmother, you mean. Oh, you needn’t mind saying it. I would be constantly reminded of it by that (looks up at portrait over sofa) even if it were not for other things.
MRS. BROWN. Yes, that too. It is so magnanimous of you to hang it there, to give such prominence to the first Mrs. Tilsbury.
MRS. TILSBURY. I suppose it is more respectable to succeed a wife who is dead than one who is divorced.