"Well, I am going to join the society," said Mrs. M'Quade, with the air of one who is prepared to receive ridicule. "No, I don't pretend for a moment that I want regenerating myself--or even that other women do--but Mrs. Whittaker has been a very good patient to the doctor one way and another, and she's stuck to us, and I think the least I can do is to join her pet scheme--and, mind you, it _is_ a pet scheme." "I call that absolutely Machiavellian," said her friend. "Oh, a doctor's wife has to be Machiavellian, my dear, and a thousand other things," said Mrs. M'Quade, easily. "I have been fifteen years in the Park, and I have kept in with everybody--never had a wrong word with a single one of Jack's patients. You may call it Machiavellian, and doubtless you are right, but I call it ripping good management myself." "So it is, my dear, so it is. And you shall have the full credit of it," said Tuppenny's mother, who was a genial soul and loved a joke as well as most people. And Regina meantime was taking life with considerable seriousness. She fell into a habit of speaking of the S.R.W. as of her life's work; indeed, she became a very important woman. No sooner was it known that she was an excellent and dominant President of the S.R.W. than she came into request for other societies of a kindred nature--no, I don't mean societies solely for the regeneration of women, not a bit of it. There was one for the sensible education of children between three and seven years old, whose committee she was asked to join not many weeks after the birth of the S.R.W.; and there was another society which bore the name of "The Robin Redbreast," and provided the poor children of a south London district with dinners for a halfpenny a head, and a number of others that they provided with dinners for nothing at all. Then there was a Shakespeare Society, which had long existed in the Park, and which until Regina became a full-blown president had never thought of asking her to come on to its committee.