"There is no possible reply," said Miss Jack hurriedly. "So much for the mock equality which is the cant of the new husbandry. How stands the account with the new young womanhood? The young ladies who are clamoring for equality with men want to eat their cake and to have it too. They want to wear masculine hats, yet to keep them on in the presence of gentlemen; to compete with men in the market-place, yet to take their seats inside omnibuses on wet days and outside them on sunny; to be 'pals' with men in theatres and restaurants and shirk their share of the expenses. I once knew a girl named Miss Friscoe who cultivated Platonic relations with young men, but never once did she pay her half of the hansom." "Pardon me," interrupted Wee Winnie. "My whole life gives the lie to your superficial sarcasm. In my anxiety to escape these obvious objurgations I have even, I admit it, gone to the opposite extreme. I have made it a point to do unto men as they would have done unto me, if I had not anticipated them. I always defray the bill at the restaurants, buy the stalls at the box-office and receive the curses of the cabman. If I see a young gentleman to the train, I always get his ticket for him and help him into the carriage. If I convey him to a ball, I bring him a button-hole, compliment him upon his costume and say soft nothings about his moustache, while if I go to a dance alone I stroll in about one in the morning, survey mankind through my eyeglass, loll a few minutes in the doorway, then go downstairs to interview the supper, and having sated myself with chicken, champagne and trifle return to my club." "To your club!" exclaimed the millionaire. "Yes--do you think the Old Maids' is the only one in London? Mine is the Lady Travellers'--do you know it, Miss Dulcimer?" "No--o," said Lillie shamefacedly. "I only know the Writers'." "Why, are you a member of that? I'm a member, too. It's getting a great club now, what with Ellaline Rand (Andrew Dibdin, you know) and Frank Maddox and Lillie Dulcimer. I wonder we haven't met there." "I'm so taken up with my own club," explained Lillie. "Naturally. But you must come and dine with me some evening at the Lady Travellers'--snug little club--much cosier than the Junior Widows', and they give you a better bottle of wine, and then the decorations are so sweetly pretty. The only advantage the Junior Widows' has over the Lady Travellers' is the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors, which makes it much nicer when you have men to dinner. I always ask them there." "Why, are you allowed to have men?" asked Miss Jack. "Certainly--in the dining and smoking rooms. Then of course there are special gentlemen's nights. We get down a lot of music-hall talent just to let them have a peep into Bohemia." "But how can you be a member of the Junior Widows'?" asked the millionaire.