Only once did I see an attack with this weapon successfully repulsed. There was an extremely pretty girl in the centre of the drawing-room, when a couple of those ladies whose existence I have hinted at entered and immediately began a frontal attack through the glazed tortoiseshell with the long handles, and the little forced smiles that accompanied the movement showed them to be old campaigners. They brought the pretty girl into focus, conning her from head to foot and exchanging whispered comments upon the result of their scrutiny. The girl saw them, and, to paraphrase the poet, they “by tact of trade were well aware that that girl knew they were looking at her”; but that fact had no effect upon them. They continued their scrutiny and their whisperings, and I saw the girl's face become rosy. But then I saw that she was “limbering up” and would go into action in a moment. She did. She was talking to an elder lady, who might have been her mother, and the latter had one of the same long-handled glasses lying on her muff. In an instant the girl had possessed herself of it, slipped it off its swivel, and was using it precisely as the others were using theirs, only returning their fire, so to speak. Then she whispered something over her hand to her companion, who laughed outright. That was enough for the attacking force: their battery was silenced; but the girl refused to withdraw, and for quite five minutes, I think, they were well aware that her eyes were upon them. Wherever they went they felt that they were still within her range, and that her innocent smile was playing about them. I never saw two more uneasy ladies in my life, and I trust that they learned their lesson. The most singular point in this connection is that the girl was known to her friends as shy and retiring by nature--a less self-assertive girl could not be imagined. It seems to me that there is a lesson to be learned from this fact in addition to that which it is to be hoped she taught her elders, who certainly did not possess her shyness: it is the lesson of the rousing of a feminine instinct of defence, which is exhibited in another form when the defence is that of offspring. Even the most timid feminine thing will act in direct opposition to its reputed nature when called on to defend its young; and even the most retiring girl may assume an offensive attitude under the provocation of poised tortoiseshell and elevated eyebrows. But I am pretty sure that that nice girl, when she went home and was alone in her room, sang no song of Miriam as she recalled her triumph. No, if she did not shed some tears at the thought of how she had behaved in so unaccountable away, I am greatly mistaken.