_You get kind of used here to see a woman do all the chores that we all considered a man’s job. Driving automobiles, or cleaning windows high up in the air, or delivering mails, or tending a street-car, or despatching trains. They have boys, quite little fellers, to help them with the trains. The woman does the work and the boy blows a whistle, like what you would expect of a boy. I seen a whole bunch of girls one day outside a factory, with their faces and hands stained yellow. That was picric acid: they make shells with it. It spoils their looks some, but they should worry. They just waved their hands and laughed at us when we tried to josh them. I reckon the girls at home are all doing that too now; but don’t you go for to stain yourself yellow, my dear._ But the Islanders are not too busy to make an attempt to entertain us. Some of these attempts are rather formidable. To boys like Second Lieutenant Sam Richards and his crony Jim Hollis, in whose pleasant little home town far west of the Alleghenies every one knows every one else, and young men and maidens usually exchange invitations over the telephone (which instrument is practically unknown in English rural districts), and that awful shibboleth of English society, the language of the third person, is happily extinct, it is a little alarming to find upon the bulletin-board in the Mess a stiff square of white pasteboard bearing the legend: +--------------------------------------+ | _Col. Adams and Officers_ | | | | LADY WYVERN-GRYPHON | | | | AT HOME | | | | SATURDAY, JULY 6TH, 3:30 P.M.-7:00 | | | | AT | | BROADOAK PARK | | | | LAWN TENNIS R.S.V.P. | +--------------------------------------+ Jim Hollis scrutinized this document whimsically. Then he turned to his companion. “We must get this right,” he said. “Who is Lady Wy-Wy—?” “Never mind,” said Sam. “Call her Lady Whiskey-Syphon—I bet the name isn’t pronounced the way it’s spelled, anyway.” “Well,” continued Jim, “who _is_ Lady Whiskey-Syphon, and what does this ‘ad.’ mean?” “It means,” replied Sam, whose sense of humour was always stimulated by the contemplation of British National institutions, “that this Lady has been away and now she’s back home.” “For three and a half hours?” “Yes. These people have a bunch of homes, like our millionaires. They own real-estate lots all over the country, and it stands to reason they have a home in each.” “And why does she put ‘Lawn Tennis’ down there in that corner?” “Because she’s going to _play_ lawn tennis, from three-thirty to seven. That’s easy.”