"What a humiliating confession!" sneered Miss Nimrod. "It is a pity you don't wear doll's-clothes."
"I claim for every woman the right to live her own life in her own toilettes," retorted Miss Jack. "The sneers about dolls are threadbare. I have watched these intellectual camaraderies, and I say they are a worse injustice to woman than any you decry."
"That sounds a promising paradox," muttered Lord Silverdale.
"The man expects the woman to talk politics—but he refuses to take a reciprocal interest in the woman's sphere of work. He will not talk nursery or servants. He will preach economy, but he will not talk it."
"That is true," said Lillie impressed. "What reply would you make to that, Miss Nimrod?"
"There is no possible reply," said Miss Jack hurriedly. "So much for the mock equality which is the cant of the new husbandry. How stands the account with the new young womanhood? The young ladies who are clamoring for equality with men want to eat their cake and to have it too. They want to wear masculine hats, yet to keep them on in the presence of gentlemen; to compete with men in the market-place, yet to take their seats inside omnibuses on wet days and outside them on sunny; to be 'pals' with men in theatres and restaurants and shirk their share of the expenses. I once knew a girl named Miss Friscoe who cultivated Platonic relations with young men, but never once did she pay her half of the hansom."
"Pardon me," interrupted Wee Winnie. "My whole life gives the lie to your superficial sarcasm. In my anxiety to escape these obvious objurgations I have even, I admit it, gone to the opposite extreme. I have made it a point to do unto men as they would have done unto me, if I had not anticipated them. I always defray the bill at the restaurants, buy the stalls at the box-office and receive the curses of the cabman. If I see a young gentleman to the train, I always get his ticket for him and help him into the carriage. If I convey him to a ball, I bring him a button-hole, compliment him upon his costume and say soft nothings about his moustache, while if I go to a dance alone I stroll in about one in the morning, survey mankind through my eyeglass, loll a few minutes in the doorway, then go downstairs to interview the supper, and having sated myself with chicken, champagne and trifle return to my club."
"To your club!" exclaimed the millionaire.
"Yes—do you think the Old Maids' is the only one in London? Mine is the Lady Travellers'—do you know it, Miss Dulcimer?"
"No—o," said Lillie shamefacedly. "I only know the Writers'."