“In fact, I never felt better in my life than I did at Old Calabar,” continued Miss Burns. “But there my mind was occupied. I was studying the habits of alligators.”
“They’re very bad, aren’t they?” asked Lady Manby, in a tone of earnest inquiry.
“I prefer to study the habits of men,” said Sally Perceval, who was always surrounded by a troup of young racing men and athletes, who admired her swimming feats.
“Men are very disappointing, I think,” observed Mrs. Trent. “They are like a lot of beads all threaded on one string.”
“And what’s the string?” asked Sally Perceval.
“Vanity. Men are far vainer than we are. Their indifference to the little arts we practise shows it. A woman whose head is bald covers it with a wig. Without a wig she would feel that she was an outcast totally powerless to attract. But a bald-headed man has no idea of diffidence. He does not bother about a wig because he expects to be adored without one.”
“And the worst of it is that he is adored,” said Mrs. Wolfstein. “Look at my passion for Henry.”
They began to talk about their husbands. Lady Holme did not join in. She and Pimpernel Schley were very silent members of the party. Even Miss Burns, who was—so she said—a spinster by conviction not by necessity, plunged into the husband question, and gave some very daring illustrations of the marriage customs of certain heathen tribes.
Pimpernel Schley hardly spoke at all. When someone, turning to her, asked her what she thought about the subject under discussion, she lifted her pale eyes and said, with the choir-boy drawl:
“I’ve got no husband and never had one, so I guess I’m no kind of a judge.”