'Oh, beyond a doubt!' echoed Mr. Farnborough.
'There's something about this particular form of feminine folly——' began Lord John.
But he wasn't listened to—for several people were talking at once.
After receiving a few preliminary kicks, the subject had fallen, as a football might, plump into the very midst of a group of school-boys. Its sudden presence there stirred even the sluggish to unwonted feats. Every one must have his kick at this Suffrage Ball, and manners were for the nonce in abeyance.
In the midst of an obscuring dust of discussion, floated fragments of condemnation: 'Sexless creatures!' 'The Shrieking Sisterhood!' etc., in which the kindest phrase was Lord John's repeated, 'Touched, you know,' as he tapped his forehead—'not really responsible, poor wretches. Touched.'
'Still, everybody doesn't know that. It must give men a quite horrid idea of women,' said Hermione, delicately.
'No'—Lord Borrodaile spoke with a wise forbearance—'we don't confound a handful of half-insane females with the whole sex.'
Dick Farnborough was in the middle of a spirited account of that earlier outbreak in the North—
'She was yelling like a Red Indian, and the policeman carried her out scratching and spitting——'