"No," snapped Mrs. Tweedie, "I added a name to the one I already had." Mrs. Tweedie always wrote her name Aurelia Scraggs Tweedie. (Scraggs was a famous actor—three times removed—the moves, hasty ones, being from Providence Plantation to Boston, from Boston to Salem, and from there to Portsmouth, with the king's officers close upon his heels at every step.)
"Oh, excuse me," said Mrs. Stout, with exaggerated politeness, "but the rest of us did change our names when we was married."
"Mrs. Stout," replied Mrs. Tweedie, as she glared at the promoter of the disturbance, "the business before us is not of a humourous nature."
"Good land!" retorted Mrs. Stout. "If we've got to wear funeral faces every time we get together we'd better bust up now."
"Humour and wit," said Mrs. Tweedie, icily, "have their place, but the changing of the name of a classic would be sacrilege." For the time being Mrs. Stout had had enough fun, and permitted Mrs. Tweedie to have the last word.
"Has any one thought of the old comedies, so-called, of Sheridan and Goldsmith?" asked Mrs. Jones. "There's 'She Stoops to Conquer,' and—"
"That would never do," said Mrs. Stout, breaking forth again; "we wouldn't 'stoop to conquer,' not even for a classic," and for once Mrs. Tweedie agreed with her.
"The title certainly is not appropriate for a woman's club," she remarked, decidedly.
"The 'School for Scandal' is a famous play," Miss Sawyer ventured to suggest, but the only approval her suggestion received was another outburst of laughter from Mrs. Stout.
"If we should give that play," she gurgled, "we'd be sure to make a hit, it would be so natural."