“And Ladysmocks all silver white.” It was evident that she was warming to the work and going farther afield, for here the stick took a dangerous sweep round in mid-air (Virginia saved her head by dodging it), and was now pointing into the copse the other side of the garden-wall, where the anemones were still in bloom. “I simply revel in Lady’s Smocks, don’t you?” she said ardently to Virginia, and then smiled expansively into the copse, though there wasn’t a solitary Lady’s Smock there.
“For my own part, I must say I prefer Doxies,” said Virginia sweetly. “‘The Doxy over the dale,’ as Shakespeare so beautifully expresses it. Don’t you just _love_ them?”
The V.A.D. had turned her back on us and was studying the distant hills.
“Virginia,” I interpolated hurriedly, for I scented trouble immediately ahead, “isn’t that the Rector coming up the lane? Then we must be getting indoors.”
But the Literary Lady had not nearly said all she had come intending to say; so she told me as we walked to the house that she herself was engaged on a most exhaustive literary work, entitled, “The Cosmic Evidences of Woman’s Supremacy.”
“Yes,” I said, in a blank tone of voice that wasn’t intended to commit me to anything. I’ve handled many similarly exhaustive MSS. in my time, and I’ve met many authoresses of the same, and my one terror was lest she should start to give me a detailed synopsis of each chapter. But fortunately we reached the house before she could get fairly launched.
After the opening hymn and prayer, the Rector briefly sketched his idea in calling the meeting together, and, after reminding us how desirable it was at a time like this that some active campaign should be set afoot to combat the drunkenness that had been such a bane to our land, he asked if any ladies who had suggestions to make would kindly speak briefly and to the point. Hardly had he sat down before the Literary Lady was on her feet urging upon us all the necessity for giving up our inebriate habits! You would have thought she was addressing loafers inside a public-house.
I sat as patiently as I could waiting for her to sit down and give place to someone else, who, at least, knew whom they were addressing. But next moment I found, to my amazement, that she was lecturing us on the advantages of a fruitarian diet, assuring us that most of the evils flesh is heir to (including drunkenness) would be done away with if we only chained our appetites to fruit. She was blissfully unaware that the cause of all the trouble in our district was—cider! After every form of food that was not fruit had been abused, she passed on—by a transition that seemed easy to her, but unaccountable to everyone else—to the question of woman’s suffrage, and we learnt that another cause for drunkenness was to be found in the fact that women had had no votes. And then it dawned upon me that we had let ourselves in for an afternoon with some irresponsible crank.