“Talking of age,” she continued, “how old do you suppose Mrs. ---- is? Somebody at tiffin yesterday _who knew the family_ declared that she could not be a day under thirty-seven. I should not give her more than thirty-five myself. My husband says thirty-two.” “About a person’s age,” I said, “what can another person’s husband know?” “What _should_ you say?” she insisted. I am sorry to have to underline so much, but you know how the average woman talks in italics. It is as if she wished to make up in emphasis--but I will not finish that good-natured sentence. “Oh,” said I, “you cannot measure Mrs. ----’s age in years! She is as old as Queen Elizabeth and as young as the day before yesterday. Parts of her date from the Restoration and parts from the advent of M. Max Nordau--” At that moment Thalia arrived. “And that is the age of all the world,” I finished. “We were wondering,” said the Average Woman, “how old Mrs. ---- is.” “_You_ were wondering,” I corrected her. “What does it matter?” said Thalia, which was precisely what I should have expected her to say. What _does_ it matter? Why should the average woman excite herself so greatly about this particularly small thing? How does it bear upon the interest or the attractiveness or the value of any woman to know precisely how many years she counts between thirty and forty, at all events to another of her sex? Yet to the average woman it seems to be the all-important fact, the first thing she must know. She is _enragée_ to find it out, she will make the most cunning enquiries and take the most subtle means. Much as I appreciate the average woman, I have in this respect no patience with her. It is as if she would measure the pretensions of all others by recognized rule of thumb with a view to discovering the surplus claim and properly scoring it down. It is surely a survival from days when we were much more feminine than we are now; but it is still very general, even among married ladies, for whom, really, the question might have an exhausted interest. “What does it matter?” said Thalia. “I see your fuchsias, like me, have taken advantage of a fine day to come out. What a lot you’ve got!” “Yes,” I said, without enthusiasm, “they were here when we came.” “Oh, don’t you like them?” exclaimed the Average Woman, “I think the fuchsia such a graceful, pretty flower.” “It is graceful and it is pretty,” I assented. There are any number of fuchsias, as Thalia said, standing in rows along the paling under the potato-creeper; the last occupant must have adored them. They remain precisely in the pots in which they were originally cherished. Knowing that the first thing I do for a flower I like is to put it in the ground where it has room to move its feet and stir about at night, and take its share in the joys of the community, Tiglath-Pileser says compassionately of the fuchsia, “It is permitted to occupy a pot;” but I notice that he does not select it for his button-hole notwithstanding.