MRS. BROWN. Oh, don’t say that. Everybody knows how much George was in love with you. Why, he was positively foolish. It was to keep Mildred from marrying, then, that you influenced her to take part in the cause of Woman’s Suffrage?
MRS. TILSBURY. Yes, George and I talked it over and we decided that that would be the most absorbing interest for her. You see the speakers tell such awful stories about men, and the inequality of men and women before the law, and the dreadful laws against married women, that no self-respecting girl who heard them would want to talk to a man hardly, much less dare to marry one.
MRS. BROWN. Mildred made a speech this afternoon didn’t she?
MRS. TILSBURY. Yes, her first one, and she has been so busy and interested in writing it that she hasn’t given a thought to the other sex except to denounce their vices.
MRS. BROWN. You have just returned from the meeting now. What a long one it must have been.
MRS. TILSBURY. Endless; and then the ladies insisted upon Mildred’s waiting afterwards for congratulations and a cup of tea.
MRS. BROWN. You want me to help you, you say, but really, I have no time to go to these meetings. My time is so taken up. There is to-day for example. This morning I had my Auction Bridge class from nine until eleven, and that is most exhausting. The teacher keeps saying “ladies concentrate” just when I am concentrating on what stunning hands he has and so beautifully manicured.
MRS. TILSBURY. My dear, I knew a woman once—you would know her, too, if I told you her name—who fell so in love with an actor that she studied manicuring, found out where he went to be manicured, and got a job there just to hold his hand an hour every two or three days!
MRS. BROWN. Some women are so silly! What was I saying? Oh, yes, after the Bridge class, I went to the Chansons de Chiffons, and I wish you could have seen Mme. Duffoird who sang. Those opera singers never know how to dress, that is why they always want to be Brunhildas and Carmens. Why, in all the times I have gone to the opera, I have never obtained a fresh idea!