About twenty girls formed the Society, which assembled one Saturday evening in an empty music-room. All were not, of course, equally productive: some had brought it no further than a riddle: and it was just these drones who, knowing nothing of the pother composition implied, criticised most stringently the efforts of the rest. Several members had pretty enough talents, Laura's two room-mates among the number: on the night Laura made her debut, the weightiest achievement was, without doubt, M. P.'s essay on "Magnanimity"; and Laura's eyes grew moist as she listened to its stirring phrases. Next best--to her thinking, at least--was a humorous episode by Cupid, who had a gift that threw Laura into a fit of amaze; and this was the ability to expand infinitely little into infinitely much; to rig out a trifle in many words, so that in the end it seemed ever so much bigger than it really was--just as a thrifty merchant boils his oranges, to swell them to twice their size. Laura being the youngest member, her affair came last on the programme: she had to sit and listen to the others, her cheeks hot, her hands very cold. Presently all were done, and then Cupid, who was chairman, called on "a new author, Rambotham, who it is hoped will prove a valuable acquisition to the Society, to read us his maiden effort". Laura rose to her feet and, trembling with nervousness, stuttered forth her prose. The three little pages shot past like a flash; she had barely stood up before she was obliged to sit down again, leaving her hearers, who had only just re-adopted their listening attitudes, agape with astonishment. She could have endured, with phlegm, the ridicule this malheur earned her: what was harder to stomach was that her paper heroics made utterly no impression. She suffered all the humiliation of a flabby fiasco, and, till bedtime, shrank out of her friends' way. "You were warned not to be too cocky, you know," Mary said judicially, on seeing her downcast air. "I didn't mean to be, really.--Then you don't think what I wrote was up to much, M. P.?" "Mm," said the elder girl, in a non-committal way. Here Cupid chimed in. "Look here, Infant, I want to ask you something. Have you ever been in Venice?" "No." "Ever seen a gondola?" "No." "Or the Doge's palace?--or a black-cloaked assassin?--or a masked lady?" "You know I haven't," murmured Laura, humbled to the dust. "And probably never will. Well then, why on earth try to write wooden, second-hand rubbish like that?" "Second-hand? ... But Cupid ... think of Scott! He couldn't have seen half he told about?" "My gracious!" ejaculated Cupid, and sat down and fanned herself with a hairbrush. "You don't imagine you're a Scott, do you? Here, hold me, M. P., I'm going to faint!"--and at Laura's quick and scarlet denial, she added: "Well, why the unmentionable not use the eyes the Lord has given you, and write about what's before them every day of your life?" "Do you think that would be better?"