their husbands, when they never intend
to do anything of the kind."

"There is a still more amazing thing, Madam," answered Ruth; "that is
that men should be so foolish as to think, or hope, they perhaps might
do so."

"Old-fashioned women used to manage it some way or other, Ruth. But the
old-fashioned woman was a very soft-hearted creature, and, maybe, it was
just as well that she was."

"But Woman's Dark Ages are nearly over, Madam; and is not the New Woman
a great improvement on the Old Woman?"

"I haven't made up my mind yet, Ruth, about the New Woman. I notice one
thing that a few of the new kind have got into their pretty heads, and
that is, that they ought to have been men; and they have followed up
that idea so far that there is now very little difference in their
looks, and still less in their walk; they go stamping along with the
step of an athlete and the stride of a peasant on fresh plowed fields.
It is the most hideous of walks imaginable. The Grecian bend, which
you cannot remember, but may have heard of, was a lackadaisical, vulgar
walking fad, but it was grace itself compared with the hideous stride
which the New Woman has acquired on the golf links or somewhere else."

"But men stamp and stride in the same way, grandmother."

"A long stride suits a man's anatomy well enough; it does not suit a
woman's--she feels every stride she takes, I'll warrant her."

"If she plays golf----"

"My dear Ethel, there is no need for her to play golf. It is a man's
game and was played for centuries by men only. In Scotland, the home of
golf, it was not thought nice for women to even go to the links, because
of the awful language they were likely to hear."

"Then, grandmother, is it not well for ladies to play golf if it keeps
men from using 'awful language' to each other?"

"God love you, child! Men will think what they dare not speak."

"If we could only have some new men!" sighed Ethel. "The lover of to-day
is just what a girl can pick up; he has no wit and no wisdom and no
illusions. He talks of his muscles and smells of cigarettes--perhaps
of whisky"--and at these words, Judge Rawdon, accompanied by Mr. Fred
Mostyn, entered the room.

The introductions slipped over easily, they hardly seemed to be
necessary, and the young man took the chair offered as naturally as
if he had sat by the hearth all his life. There was no pause and no
embarrassment and no useless polite platitudes; and Ethel's first
feeli