. Ballinger,
whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two
parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain
Osric Dane.

The question of that lady's reception had for a month past profoundly
moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt
themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity
plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the
alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as
Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the
author of "The Wings of Death," no forebodings of the kind disturbed the
conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck.
"The Wings of Death" had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck's suggestion, been
chosen as the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and
each member had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to
appropriate whatever seemed most likely to be of use in the comments
of the others. Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the
opportunity thus offered; but it was now openly recognised that, as a
member of the Lunch Club, Mrs. Roby was a failure. "It all comes," as
Miss Van Vluyck put it, "of accepting a woman on a man's estimation."
Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from a prolonged sojourn in exotic
regions--the other ladies no longer took the trouble to remember
where--had been emphatically commended by the distinguished biologist,
Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever met; and the
members of the Lunch Club, awed by an encomium that carried the weight
of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the Professor's social sympathies
would follow the line of his scientific bent, had seized the chance of
annexing a biological member. Their disillusionment was complete. At
Miss Van Vluyck's first off-hand mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby
had confusedly murmured: "I know so little about metres--" and after
that painful betrayal of incompetence she had prudently withdrawn from
farther participation in the mental gymnastics of the club.

"I suppose she flattered him," Miss Van Vluyck summed up--"or else it's
the way she does her hair."

The dimensions of Miss Van Vluyck's dining-room having restricted the
membership of the club to six, the non-conductiveness of one member was
a serious obstacle to the exchange of ideas, and some wonder had already
been expressed that Mrs. Roby