These, and many more follies, improprieties and wickedness the Perfect Stranger was wondering witness of. "But," observed the Perfect Stranger, "where is the 'Matron's Hiss'?" "Oh!" replied the Proud Briton, with some embarrassment, "but in all this there is nothing _new_, you know, nothing unprecedented, innovating, subversive of accepted Social Laws; nothing 'bad form,' that is to say unusual, unexpected, unconsecrated by respectable usage. If there _is_ anything Naughty, it is not New, and what is--possibly--New is not Naughty. _Therefore_, there is no call for that omnipotent Hiss!" "Humph! What then _would_ elicit it?" inquired the Perfect Stranger. "_That_ is a bit difficult to define, off-hand," answered the Proud Briton, hesitatingly. "Say, for example, a natural waist, or absence of corsets, high-dress at a Court function, marriage for love--which in Society or in the tennis-court is equivalent to _nothing_--wearing an unfashionable hat, or four-buttoned gloves when six are _de règle_, sounding your g's (when fashion dictates their being dropped), or not sounding your h's (till fashion tells you to drop _them_), blushing inopportunely--say, at the stare of a duke or the 'suggestiveness' of a millionaire--showing sympathy out of your own 'set,' objecting to tailor-made attire or accepted bathing-costume, discussing questions of sex in a spirit of serious sympathy instead of through some _décadent_ Art-medium; being earnest, original, or spontaneous in _any_ way, and thus defying Society's golden rule, 'Do always as others do.'" "Is that the Masterful Matron's sole rule?" queried the Perfect Stranger. "Substantially yes," replied the Proud Briton; "though it is supplemented, perhaps, by the corollary, 'Never be either the first or the last to do a new thing.'" "Then," commented the Perfect Stranger, "the Matron's Hiss would be silent at the sight of bared shoulders and bust in mid-winter, but would sound with anserine shrillness at the sight of a lady's lower limbs comfortably, and conveniently, and healthily, _and_ decently, but unconventionally, clad in summer on a cycle?" "Precisely!" said the Proud Briton, though perhaps with less of British pride than usual. "Then," said the Perfect Stranger, "I think your Hissing Matron is a silly, despotic, cackling old goose, who will never save the social Capitol! But who and what is _that_?" _That_ was a portly, florid, and high-nosed elderly dame, of pompous demeanour, and flamboyant raiment, elaborately and obviously cosmetiqued, and arrayed in a startlingly low-cut garment. "_That_," said the Proud Briton, with an uneasy smile, "_is_ Mrs. GRUNDY, the great Goose-Autocrat, the Palladium of Propriety, the Ægis of Social Morality, the very Masterful Matron of whom we have been talking." "Then," demanded the Perfect Stranger, with staggering pertinence, "_Why does she not Hiss at Herself?_" The Proud Briton was silent. * * * * *