"Oh, mother, here's Miss Cloot just getting out of her victoria," said Genevieve. "Now, the College of Beauty _would_ be a godsend to _her_! You must really tell her about it--it would be a charity!" Miss Cloot was the ugliest old maid in London and its environs within a radius of twenty miles; she was really dreadful--that's the only word for it. She was comfortably off, yet she was still a spinster at forty. She was a remarkable woman, was Miss Cloot--you'll see. During a lull in the conversation, Mother introduced the subject of the College of Beauty--as a charity. At first Miss Cloot listened with somewhat feeble interest; but after a few moments there suddenly appeared in her eye a remarkable light; beyond that, there was little perceptible change in her manner; but anyone who knew her well would have known that that light in her eye meant _something_. "Dear me, yes, very interesting--an excellent notion," said Miss Cloot, blandly. [Illustration: "'AN EXCELLENT NOTION,' SAID MISS CLOOT."] "But you can't think for an instant that there's anything in it?" said Mother. "Dear me, why not?" said Miss Cloot. "I have no doubt there's a great deal in it. Why _shouldn't_ there be?--'_Too wonderful to be true!_'--well, but, are Edison's inventions too wonderful to be true? Oh, dear me, no! Not a bit too wonderful. You may be sure there's something in it." "Do--er--do _you_ propose to----?" began Mother: and then it suddenly occurred to her that she had better not ask _that_ question; so she turned it off to--"get any new things this spring?" Miss Cloot went straight home with that remarkable light in her eye all the time; and when she got in she straightway sat down and wrote a dozen letters. Miss Cloot numbered among her extensive acquaintance twelve old maids, all comfortably off, and all plain--though falling short of her own attainments in the latter respect. On the evening of the following day there was a tea party at Miss Cloot's--it consisted of those twelve other old maids of her acquaintance. It was more of a board meeting than an ordinary tea party, for they took their seats round a table at the head of which sat their hostess. "Ladies!" said Miss Cloot (who really _was_ a remarkable woman--the more I reflect upon her, the more I am impressed by this fact), "I have asked you here to-day to discuss a very important matter--very important to us. Possibly you may have seen this paragraph in the newspaper?" and she handed round the cutting which she had taken from Genevieve's paper. The twelve old maids read it, and did not seem to see much in it. Miss Cloot's keen intuition perceived this. "I did not expect you to. We can't _all_ be of brilliant intellect, of course," she said. "Pray don't think I _blame_ you for any deficiencies in that respect; we none of us can radically alter the intelligence--or want of it--which has been vouchsafed to us."