The club had gone, save only the guest of the afternoon and a few friends of the hostess, who lingered to congratulate her. It had been a most successful meeting. The guest who had spoken was the president of a southern club. The hearers were warm in their praises of the leisurely music of her southern voice, the charm of her southern manner, so simple and direct and sympathetic, her beauty, her grace, even of the finish of her toilet. She had handled a weighty subject with a light touch (it was the child labor of the south), and her husband being a very large manufacturer, she had spoken out of experience as well as theory. Moreover, she had shown a luminous common sense and a tolerant humor such as did not always brighten such serious themes; and not only the earnest students of the club, but the more flippant members, were aroused to an unusual and captivated attention. Now they were loath to let her go; pressing about, tarrying amid the teacups, and only reluctantly faring forth as the maids appeared to remove the wreckage of the feast. The hostess sank, weary but elated, into a chair by Miss Clymer, the secretary, as the last silken skirt rustled away. Mrs. Waite, the president, who was dallying with socialism, had evidently introduced her new pet to the visitor, who listened politely. "After all," suggested Mrs. Clymer, more from the amiable design of steering the conversation within safe limits than out of any craving to exploit her own views, "after all, do we really know _how_ these people feel? Is there one of us, for example, who ever had an intimate friend among them, a woman who worked with her hands?" "Madelaide Dunbar told me once," remarked the youngest club member, "that she was fonder of her maid than of most of her friends." "Which maid?" inquired another. "The one who took her pearl necklace?" "Nobody took those pearls; Madelaide hid them herself, and forgot all about it, and then found them in her soiled-handkerchief bag! But it wasn't that one. This one had a little wave to her nose and her eyes were near together." "Is she with Madelaide now?" "I think she married. Madelaide was buying teaspoons the other day, and asking for rather light weight--maybe they were for her wedding present." The South Carolinian smothered a smile. "Madelaide doesn't exactly count," said the hostess.