"Well, then, Mumbo Jumbo did in his."
"Excuse me," interposed Miss Jack. "We are getting off the point. I did not say the passage was calculated to raise a blush, I said it was a grave error of taste."
"It is a mere flea-bite," broke in the millionaire, impatiently. "I liked it when I first read it, and I like it now I hear it again. It is a touch of nature that brings the Tartary traveller home to every fireside."
"Besides," added Lord Silverdale. "The introduction of the butterfly and the lily makes it quite poetical."
"Ladies and gentlemen," interposed the President, at last, "we are not here to discuss entomology or æsthetics. You stated, Miss Jack, that you thought of joining us as a protest against female unconventionally."
"I said unconventional females," persisted Miss Jack.
"Even so, I do not follow you," said Lillie.
"It is extremely simple. I am unable to marry because I have a frank nature, not given to feigning or fawning. I cannot bring a husband what he expects nowadays in a wife."
"What is that?" inquired Lillie curiously.
"A chum," answered Miss Jack. "Formerly a man wanted a wife, now he wants a woman to sympathize with his intellectual interests, to talk with him intelligently about his business, discuss politics with him—nay, almost to smoke with him. Tobacco for two is destined to be the ideal of the immediate future. The girls he favors are those who flatter him by imitating him. It is women like Wee Winnie who have depraved his taste. There is nothing the natural man craves less for than a clever, learned wife. Only he has been talked over into believing that he needs intellectual companionship, and now he won't be happy till he gets it. I have escaped politics and affairs all my life, and I am determined not to marry into them."