“Well, I’m sure,” said the Lady-with-the-Bust, “I don’t know what men mean by our not having a sense of humour.  I’m sure I have.  I know I went last week to a vaudeville, and I just laughed all through.  Of course I can’t read Mark Twain, or anything like that, but then I don’t call that funny, do you?” she concluded, turning to the Hostess.

But the Hostess, feeling somehow that the ground was dangerous, had already risen, and in a moment more the ladies had floated out of the room and upstairs to the drawing-room, where they spread themselves about in easy chairs in billows of pretty coloured silk.

“How charming it is,” the Chief Lady Guest began, “to find men coming so entirely to our point of view!  Do you know it was so delightful to-night:  I hardly heard a word of dissent or contradiction.”

Thus they talked; except the Soft Lady, who had slipped into a seat by herself with an album over her knees, and with an empty chair on either side of her.  There she waited.

Meantime, down below, the men had shifted into chairs to one end of the table and the Heavy Host was shoving cigars at them, thick as ropes, and passing the port wine, with his big fist round the neck of the decanter.  But for his success in life he could have had a place as a bar tender anywhere.

None of them spoke till the cigars were well alight.

Then the Host said very deliberately, taking each word at his leisure, with smoke in between: 

“Of course—­this—­suffrage business—­”

“Tommyrot!” exclaimed the Smooth Gentleman, with great alacrity, his mask entirely laid aside.

“Damn foolishness,” gurgled the Heavy Business Friend, sipping his port.

“Of course you can’t really discuss it with women,” murmured the Host.

“Oh, no,” assented all the others.  Even the Half Man sipped his wine and turned traitor, there being no one to see.

“You see,” said the Host, “if my wife likes to go to meetings and be on committees, why, I don’t stop her.”

“Neither do I mine,” said the Heavy Friend.  “It amuses her, so I let her do it.”  His wife, the Lady-with-the-Bust, was safely out of hearing.

“I remember once,” began the Interesting Man, “saying to”—­he paused a moment, for the others were looking at him—­“another man that if women did get the vote they’d never use it, anyway.  All they like is being talked about for not getting it.”

After which, having exhausted the Woman Question, the five men turned to such bigger subjects as the fall in sterling exchange and the President’s seventeenth note to Germany.

Then presently they went upstairs.  And when they reached the door of the drawing-room a keen observer, or, indeed, any kind of observer, might have seen that all five of them made an obvious advance towards the two empty seats beside the Soft Lady.

VII.  The Grass Bachelor’s Guide.  With sincere Apologies to the Ladies’ Periodicals