explained to me that two boys had sent for me, as a householder, to bail them out.

The remainder of my narrative is clouded with pain. I would willingly stop at this point. But, with a view to completeness, I continue. On reaching the police-station, I learned to my indignation that the "mysterious minstrels" and my charges had the same identity. This discovery will ever be a cause of deep regret to myself, and, I think I may add, for very practical and sufficient reasons, to Georgie and Jacky also.

RECIPROCITY.

Columbia. "Sorry they are parting company and going home—the contest for the Cup had such a lame conclusion!"

Britannia. "Well, my dear whose fault was it? Considering that I undertake to rule the Waves, you surely might manage to keep the Course!"

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

Chorus (slow music). "We're a rare old—fair old—rickety, rackety Crew!"

A DIALOGUE OF THE NIGHT.

Scene—The Shades at Nightfall. The Swiftian Ladies alone.

Lady Smart. Well, ladies; now let us have a cup of discourse to ourselves.

Lady Answerall. Tea and tattle! That is all the men used to think us fit for.

Lady Sparkish. But how times have changed—above stairs!

Lady Smart. Fie! Say rather below stairs, Lady Sparkish. Up and down are arbitrary or relative terms after all, in the universe. And I'm sure there are no fine drawing-room manners in the modern modish world.

Miss Notable. Heigho! Methinks, nevertheless, I would fain take the air of a London Season once again, however fallen off from the dear dead days of Mr. Spectator.

Lady Answerall. Hush, child! What would Charon say if he heard you? Though in truth I am much of your mind myself.

Lady Sparkish. Better their vivid vulgarity than our vapid gentility!

Miss Notable. La, yes! Our vaporous "fine manners" give me the vapours.

Lady Smart. They do not have "vapours" now, above—well t'other side the Styx, let us say.

Lady Answerall. Indeed, no, nothing so simple and womanly, i' faith. They have substituted neurotic pessimism—and chloral.

Lady Smart. Worse far than our occasional sly sippings of—strong waters!

Lady Answerall. What said the dear satiric Dean?

Miss Notable. Whereas now it would be:—

Lady Sparkish. La, child, you are as much a blue-stocking as the modish she-scribblers of the century-end. We used to leave all that sort of thing to Grub Street.

Miss Notable. Tilly-vally! Grub Street has been made genteel since the ladies took to haunting it. 'Tis now no shabby Alsatia, but a swell sanctuary. Faith, one o' these odd-cum-shortlies—as we used to say—I'll e'en write "The Journal of a Modern Lady" (in imitation of the Dean) up-to-date, for 1895, instead of 1728, to wit.

Lady Smart. Have a care, child! Already you simper like a furmety kettle, and slop over like an ill-made junket. Soon you'll be as smug and self-conscious as a new member of "The Souls," if you be not watchful.

Miss Notable. Well, but now the men are away, what really think you, entre nous, of the New Woman movement?

Lady Answerall. Why, that 'tis older than Mary Woolstonecroft, and, in fact, originated about the time when Eve took the first bite at the first apple.

Miss Notable. Heigho! 'Tis fine to sit here in the Shades, and say so; but I own I should like well enough to ruffle it in new-fangled clubs and select coteries, to be the talk of the town as Aphra Behn was, only in the irreproachable company of popular savants and Bishops' sons; to see my niminy-piminy neuroticisms go into their tenth edition, have my anti-matrimonial mouthings discussed in monthly magazines and religious newspapers, and—have a free slap at the monster, Man, whose best voluntary treatment of us means, at bottom, nothing better than a golden cage and a silken gag.

Lady Sparkish. "Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em!"—as the Dean said concerning Chief Justice Whitshed's coach-motto.

Miss Notable. Humph! Did he not also say, in dealing with The Furniture of a Woman's Mind—

Lady Sparkish. What do you mean, Miss?

Miss Notable. Ha! ha! ha! Not much. But, as Lady Answerall used to say, when we had a dish of tea and tittle-tattle together in the sweet, solid, wicked, bewitching old modish days, "You know I'm old Tell-truth, and love to call a spade a spade."

Lady Sparkish. Oh, I see. As the dear old Dean also said—

Mr. Neverout (quoting)—