* * * * * [Illustration: _The New Footman_ (_stentoriously_). “Mrs. Montgomery Jenkins’s carriage!” _Mrs. Montgomery Jenkins._ “A--tell the coachman to wait.” _New Footman._ “Please, ma’am, he says he can’t. He says he’s got another job at twenty minnits past eleven!”] * * * * * [Illustration: “I’ve just left Mr. Brayne, and it’s quite a relief to meet _you_. He is _so_ intellectual, you know!”] * * * * * [Illustration: ANCIENT HISTORY _The Frumps_ (_who rather fancy themselves in this style_). “It’s called the Early Victorian bonnet.” _Guileless Youth_ (_under the impression that he is paying a graceful compliment_). “Oh yes. I suppose you wore them when you were _quite_ girls.”] * * * * * SOME EMOTIONS BUT NO MORAL _Lady Angleby_ (_mother of pretty débutante_). Really! It’s positively painful. It ought to be stopped. _Elderly Countess_ (_with no daughters_). Eh, what? Tooth hurtin’? Have it out, my dear. Or try mind healin’. It’s very expensive, but Susan Southwater tells me---- _Lady A._ Oh, Susan! She’s always got some bee in her bonnet. Though how any self-respecting bee _could_! But I wasn’t talking about teeth. It’s this wretched paper. Listen to this. “One of the prettiest _débutantes_ I saw was Miss Nora Angleby, whose mother, Lady Angleby, was wearing nothing but a string of pearls----” _E. C._ Have ’em up for libel, my dear. I wouldn’t stand it. _Lady A._ “--nothing but a string of pearls with her white frock, and looking so delightfully young. Everyone was saying that they might be sisters.” Isn’t it too silly? _E. C._ H’m! I dunno. You do look youngish sometimes. As for the frock--don’t you think it was a _leetle_ too--for the part, you know? _Lady A._ Oh, did you think so? It’s the way they are cutting them this year for girls. But don’t you think they ought to be pulled up? _E. C._ The frocks, my dear, or the dressmakers, or the girls? _Lady A._ No, no, the editors. I’m in this wretched rag week after week. _Mrs. Thrope (also mother of pretty débutante)._ So am I. It’s a perfect scandal. _Lady A._ Are you? I don’t _see_ your name anywhere. _Mrs. T._ If you look--isn’t there an account of the Hersham House Ball? _Lady A._ Oh, yes, here you are. “Mrs. Thrope, who goes everywhere, was in great good looks and her well-known magenta frock.” You’ll have to get a new one, darling, after that. “She was chaperoning her daughter, Miss Anne Thrope, another _débutante_, who was quite the beauty of the----” Well, really! What can it matter to anyone whether Anne’s a beauty or not, poor darling! _Mrs. T._ She did look rather sweet, didn’t she? _Lady A._ What? Oh, ah, yes. Quite pretty, I thought. But to have it put in print like that for any Dick, Tom, or Harry to read! It does away with all the privacy of life. _E. C._ Who _does_ read it--besides you two?