_Lady Smart._ Well, ladies; now let us have a cup of discourse to ourselves. _Lady Answerall._ Tea and tattle! That is all the men used to think us fit for. _Lady Sparkish._ But how times have changed--above stairs! _Lady Smart._ Fie! Say rather _below_ stairs, Lady SPARKISH. Up and down are arbitrary or relative terms after all, in the universe. And I'm sure there are no fine drawing-room manners in the modern modish world. _Miss Notable._ Heigho! Methinks, nevertheless, I would fain take the air of a London Season once again, however fallen off from the dear dead days of Mr. SPECTATOR. _Lady Answerall._ Hush, child! What would Charon say if he heard you? Though in truth I am much of your mind myself. _Lady Sparkish._ Better their vivid vulgarity than our vapid gentility! _Miss Notable._ La, yes! Our vaporous "fine manners" give me the vapours. _Lady Smart._ They do not have "vapours" now, above--well t'other side the Styx, let us say. _Lady Answerall._ Indeed, no, nothing so simple and womanly, i' faith. _They_ have substituted neurotic pessimism--and chloral. _Lady Smart._ Worse far than our occasional sly sippings of--strong waters! _Lady Answerall._ What said the dear satiric Dean? "Now all alone poor madam sits In vapours and hysteric fits; A dreadful interval of spleen How shall we pass the time between? Here, BETTY, let me take my drops, And feel my pulse, I know it stops; This head of mine, lord, how it swims And such a pain in all my limbs!" _Miss Notable._ Whereas now it would be:-- "Now sad and sole poor madam lies, Insomnia holding wide her eyes: 'Past ten, and not a single wink. Though I turned in at four, I think! If I don't get some hours of sleep, To-day's appointments can I keep? And 'tis the Prince's garden-party! Oh! to be buxom, hale, and hearty Like some mere milkmaid, who can drowse After a frolic and a bowse, Upon a tumbled truss of hay! I _must_ have sleep. BETTY, I say, Bring me the cognac and the choral!' --You may supply the modern moral!" _Lady Sparkish._ La, child, you are as much a blue-stocking as the modish she-scribblers of the century-end. _We_ used to leave all that sort of thing to Grub Street. _Miss Notable._ Tilly-vally! Grub Street has been made genteel since the ladies took to haunting it. 'Tis now no shabby Alsatia, but a swell sanctuary. Faith, one o' these odd-cum-shortlies--as we used to say--I'll e'en write "The Journal of a Modern Lady" (in imitation of the Dean) up-to-date, for 1895, instead of 1728, to wit. _Lady Smart._ Have a care, child! Already you simper like a furmety kettle, and slop over like an ill-made junket. Soon you'll be as smug and self-conscious as a new member of "The Souls," if you be not watchful. _Miss Notable._ Well, but now the men are away, what really think you, _entre nous_, of the New Woman movement?