“If it comes to that,” she went on, “your remark seemed to me, or rather it seems to me now that I have had time to get it into perspective, like one of those unpleasant pleasant things that are the most irritating of all.” “Do you object to my thinking that women like one another better than they used to?” “No. I only object to your taunting us with it.” “Will you please—” “No, I will not explain. It should be obvious that we do not like Man to look down from his parapet and praise us for a purely human trait.” “Heavens!” I exclaimed, “did I really look down from a parapet? I never should have suspected it. It never would have occurred to me that you would take offence at my simple gratification. Don’t you like to like one another?” “Stop bantering,” she said in a different tone, with her cup raised, “and tell me whether you really think women are getting to like one another.” “Think it? Is it not one of those things which we may know by observation?” “I’m afraid you are deceived. You have inferred too much from the existence of women’s clubs. Women have a great many more opportunities to dislike each other than they used to have. Everything has become complicated. A man should understand. Nowadays there are a great many ways in which women can be disagreeable.” “There certainly are a great many ways in which they can be agreeable.” “There is a thorn under that rose, I fancy. I can feel that you have no comprehension of how difficult some things have become. Take the strain we were under this afternoon. Probably I shouldn’t tell you—” “Then you certainly must.” “—but we had a dreadful squabble over the question as to whether we should stop letting in the reporters. That question has been coming up at least once a year in the Artemis. It is a delicious sensation to be quoted in eight papers, but it is gall and wormwood to have the hat you wore because it was raining described in one. The other day we found out that those delicately satirical things in the _Dynamo_ have been written by the sweetest little girl you ever saw whom we always supposed was writing the lovely discriminating notices that appeared in the _Flashlight_. That turned the scale. We voted to be published no more.” “What a beautiful story that will make for the _Dynamo_ to-morrow.” “Do you think so? But then they will be through.” [Illustration] “Perhaps.” “O, we are going to be very strict! The trouble is that the newspaper people would take some detached part of our meeting and it would look so queer. You see they have a great many meetings to go to.” “Just like the rest of you.” “Yes, just like the rest of us; that’s the trouble. And that makes it so hard sometimes. I wanted Mrs. Trimwood to read her paper on ‘Children’s Playgrounds’ at the meeting to-day—it was my committee’s day—and she could read it only at the very last minute, because she wanted to read it at the Pocahontas first.” “What was the subject of your meeting to-day?”