"I know," she said, "and that is why they'll be all the better for an occasional touch of lightness. There's some Latin quotation about Apollo, isn't there, my Public School and University man? Well, I'm all for that."
"But," I said, "you don't know how dangerous it is to be light and humorous at public meetings or in the House of Commons. A man gets a reputation for that sort of thing, and then he's expected to keep it up; and, anyhow, it gives him no influence, however funny he may be. The other men laugh at him, but distrust him profoundly."
"Pooh!" said Francisca. "That's all very well for men—they have little humour and no wit—"
"My dear Francesca, how can you venture to fly in the face of all experience—"
"Men's experience," she said; "it doesn't count. You've often said that smoking-room stories are the dullest in the world."
"How you do dart about," I said, "from subject to subject. Just now you were in a polling-booth and now you're in a smoking-room."
"And heartily ashamed to be found there—stale tobacco and staler stories. Why have a smoking-room at all when everybody's grandmother has her own cigarette case and her own special brand of cigarettes?"
"We ought rather," I said, "to have two smoking-rooms to every house, one for me and the likes of me and the other for the grandmothers."
"Segregating the sexes again! Surely if we have mixed bathing we may have mixed smoking."
"And mixed voting," I said.