We all laughed, but we felt that it was odd. In Babyland all went on in an orderly and respectable fashion. The gayest girls, the fastest young men, as soon as they were married and settled there, subsided at once into quiet, domestic ways. At our dances each of us secretly thought her own husband the most interesting person present, and he returned the compliment, and after a peaceful evening of passing them about we were always very thankful to get them back to go home with. Were we, then, so unlike the rest of humanity? "Are we sure?" asked Minnie Mason, always prone to speculation. "It is not likely that we are utterly different from the rest of the world. Who knows what dark tragedies lie hidden in the recesses of the heart? Who knows all her neighbour's secret history?" This was being rather personal, but no one took it home, for we never minded what Minnie said; and as many of the club were, as always occurred, detained at home by domestic duties, we thought it might apply to one of them. But I can't deny that we, and especially Minnie, who had a relish for what was sensational, and was pleased to find that realistic fiction, which she had always thought must be dull, was really exciting, felt a little ashamed at our being so behind the age--"provincial," as Mr. James would call it; "obsolete," as Mr. Howells is fond of saying--at Babyland as not to have the ghost of a scandal among us. None of us wished to give cause for the scandal ourselves; but I think we might not have been as sorry as we ought to be if one of our neighbours had been obliging enough to do so. We did not want anything very bad, you know. Of course none of us could ever have dreamed of running away with a fascinating young man--like Anna Karenina--because in the first place we all liked our husbands, and in the next place, who could be depended upon to go into town to do the marketing, and to see that the children wore their india-rubbers on wet days? But anything short of that we felt we could bear with equanimity.