"I am amply satisfied with the result of our scheme of education," she was wont to say. "No, it is not easy--it is much easier to bring up children in the conventional way. But the result--oh, my dear lady, the result, when you feel a thrill of pride that your children are different to others, is worth the sacrifice." "Now I wonder what," said the lady in question in the bosom of her family, "did that foolish woman particularly have to sacrifice? The general feeling in the Park seems to be that the Whittakers are horrid children--disagreeable, ill-bred, sententious, and altogether ridiculous; too sharp in one way, too stupid for words in another. And yet she talks about sacrifice!" "Oh, Maudie isn't sharp--at least, not particularly so," said her own girl, who, being a couple of years older than Maudie Whittaker, knew fairly well the lie of the land. "Julia's sharp--a needle isn't in it. It's Julia who backs Maudie up in everything, and Julia is a horrid little beast whom everybody hates and loathes. She tried it on with me once when I was at school, but I soon put the young lady in her right place with a good setting down, and she never tried it on any more. They'd have been all right if they had been properly brought up, which they weren't." "You think not?" "Oh no, mother. You have no idea how intensely silly Mrs. Whittaker is." "Is she? I thought she was such a brilliant woman." "I believe she calls herself so; nobody else agrees with her." "Do you know what I heard about Mrs. Whittaker only yesterday?" said the mother, with a sudden gleam of remembrance. "She has gone in for public speaking. They say it's too killing for words." "Speaking on what?" asked the girl. "On the improvement of the condition of women." "What! a political affair?" "No, no; not political at all; a something quite disconnected with politics--quite above them. She has been chosen President of a new society which is to be called 'The Society for the Regeneration of Women.'" CHAPTER V THE S.R.W. Why is it that women are so fond of founding societies both for the improvement of themselves and of each other? Is it a confession of weakness, or is it one of the signs of the coming of the millenium? Mrs. Whittaker was a woman who never did things by halves. She distinctly prided herself thereupon. "If a thing, my dear, is worth doing," I heard her say about the time of which I am writing, "it is worth doing _well_. I have great faith--although I have gone so far above the old-world thoughts of religion--in the verse which says: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.' It is a grand precept, one that I instil into my children--er--er--" "For all you are worth," remarked a flippant young woman who was listening. "I--I shouldn't have expressed it in that way," stammered Regina, somewhat taken aback. "But--but--er--it's what I mean." "And your children, are they the same?"