"Wiser not, even there," murmured Sir Wilfred Madderley, under his breath. "But you have all interrupted me, and haven't listened to what I was telling you about my intelligent man; and if you eat my food you must listen to my stones--it's only fair." "But if even your own husband doesn't think it necessary to listen to them," Lord Bobby objected, "why should we, who have never desired to be anything more than sisters to you?" "Because he doesn't eat my food--I eat his; that makes all the difference, don't you see?" "Then do you listen to his stories?" "To every one of them every time they are told; and I know to an inch the exact place where to laugh. But I'm going on about my man. He was one of those instructive boring people, who will tell you the reason of things; and he explained to me that soldiers wear khaki and polar bears white, because if you are dressed in the same colour as the place where you are, it looks as if you weren't there. And it has since occurred to me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody would be able to find me even in my own house. Don't you think it is rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause which she had learned to expect as her right. "You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others murmured their approval. "I need never say 'Not at home'; callers would just come in and look round the drawing-room and go out again, without ever seeing that I was there at all. It really would be sweet!" "It seems to me to be a theory which might be adapted with benefit to all sorts and conditions of men," said Elisabeth; "I think I shall take out a patent for designing invisible costumes for every possible occasion. I feel I could do it, and do it well." "It is adopted to a great extent even now," Sir Wilfred remarked; "I believe that our generals wear scarlet so that they may not always be distinguishable from the red-tape of the War Office." "And one must not forget," added Lord Bobby thoughtfully, "that the benches of the House of Commons are green." "Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way," said Lady Silverhampton; "I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't." Lord Stonebridge began to argue. "But that wouldn't be the other way; it would be the same thing." "How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are, except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't prove it at all." "Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as saying that that person is like you."