ted tailor-mades; pseudo-suede gloves,
chiffon scarfs, generally ropey and heliotrope of hue; odd-coloured
jerseys affiliated to odd-cut skirts, plus jangling oriental bracelets
and chains, and mix that with a few puckered, leather-hued countenances
and you get the club's principal ingredient.

Anglo-Indian.

Anyway the place is conveniently situated, and quite bearable if you
can put up with the waiter or the somewhat overdecorated and
ever-changing waitress telling you, in front of your guest, that you
"can only 'ave cakes and bread-un-butter forrer shilling,
every-think-else-is extra."

Cheery, when you may have been doing your best to make an impression!

Of course every member (if she ever gets as far as this) of every
ladies' club will here draw her pharisaical skirts about her and edge
nearer to her neighbour.

"_Did_ you read this"--quotes--"_awfully_ good, isn't it? Of course
it's meant for the Imperatrix--the Toga--the Ninth Century--the Spook."

It _isn't_!

It's just typical.

Is there any one thing in any one ladies' club to differentiate it from
its sister establishment--especially in the canteen?

I will pay one year's town subscription to any woman knowing, of
course, the difference between husks and food, who will honestly
declare that her heart has _not_ plumped to her boots after a
spur-on-the-moment invitation to a _man_ to lunch or dine at her club.

By spur-on-the-moment I mean when she has not had the time to negotiate
with the cook, via the head waiter.

You do not need the menu to tell you that plaice is here your portion;
or a lightning glance to ascertain that the exact number of your prunes
is six, and that of your guest half a dozen; or just a sip of your
coffee--well! there you begin to talk feverishly and to press liqueurs
and cigarettes upon the suffering guest.

But to come back to the club tea-room.

"My dear," Susan Hetth was saying, jangling with the best, and pitching
her voice so that it literally, though slangily, beat the band, "I
really think, considering your position and recent bereavement, that
you _should_ wear----"

"Please be quiet, Auntie," said Leonie, who in a grey and pale mauve
confection looked like a field of statice against a pearl-grey sky. "I
came here to talk about you, not clothes. You see I want to tell you
how I have settled things before I sail."

Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way
which had been so at