ike irreverence towards dividends.

Reginald had left the selection of a feeding-ground to her womanly
intuition, but he chose the wine himself, knowing that womanly intuition
stops short at claret. A woman will cheerfully choose husbands for her
less attractive friends, or take sides in a political controversy without
the least knowledge of the issues involved--but no woman ever cheerfully
chose a claret.

"Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me," said Reginald:
"they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through, wondering what
the next course is going to be like--and during the rest of the menu one
wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres. Don't you love watching
the different ways people have of entering a restaurant? There is the
woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were held together
by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its functions at any moment;
it's really a relief to see her reach her chair in safety. Then there
are the people who troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if
they were angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that type of
Briton very much in hotels abroad. And nowadays there are always the
Johannesbourgeois, who bring a Cape-to-Cairo atmosphere with them--what
may be called the Rand Manner, I suppose."

"Talking about hotels abroad," said the Duchess, "I am preparing notes
for a lecture at the Club on the educational effects of modern travel,
dealing chiefly with the moral side of the question. I was talking to
Lady Beauwhistle's aunt the other day--she's just come back from Paris,
you know. Such a sweet woman"--

"And so silly. In these days of the over-education of women she's quite
refreshing. They say some people went through the siege of Paris without
knowing that France and Germany were at war; but the Beauwhistle aunt is
credited with having passed the whole winter in Paris under the
impression that the Humberts were a kind of bicycle . . . Isn't there a
bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we have
known on earth in another world? How frightfully embarrassing to meet a
whole shoal of whitebait you had last known at Prince's! I'm sure in my
nervousness I should talk of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they
would be quite as offended if one hadn't eaten them. I know if I were
served up at a cannibal feast I should be dreadfully annoyed if anyone
found fault with me for not bei