Miss Jack proved to be an extremely eligible candidate so far as appearances went. She bowed stiffly on being introduced to Miss Nimrod.
"May I ask if that is to be the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?" she inquired of the President. "Because if so I am afraid I have made a mistaken journey. It is as a protest against unconventional females that I designed to join you."
"Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?"
"Is it to me you are referring as an unconventional female?" asked Miss Nimrod, bridling up.
"Certainly," replied Miss Jack, with exquisite politeness. "I lay stress upon your sex, merely because it is not obvious."
"Well, I am an unconventional female, and I glory in it," said Nelly Nimrod, seating herself astride the sofa. "I did not expect to hear the provincial suburban note struck within these walls. I claim the right of every woman to lead her own life in her own toilettes."
"And a pretty life you have led!"
"I have, indeed!" cried Miss Nimrod, goaded almost to oratory by Miss Jack's taunts. "Not the ugly, unlovely life of the average woman. I have exhausted all the sensations which are the common guerdon of youth and health and high spirits, and which have for the most part been selfishly monopolized by man. The splendid audacity of youth has burnt in my veins and fired me to burst my swaddling clothes and strike for the emancipation of my sex. I have not merely played cricket in a white shirt and lawn tennis in a blue serge skirt, I have not only skated in low-heeled boots and fenced in corduroy knickerbockers, but I have sailed the seas in an oil-skin jacket and a sou'-wester and swum them in nothing and walked beneath them in the diver's mail. I have waded after salmon in long boots and caught trout in tweed knickerbockers and spats. Nay, more! I have proclaimed the dignity of womanhood upon the moors, and have shot grouse in brown leather gaiters and a sweet Norfolk jacket with half-inch tucks. But this is not the climax, I have——"
