'And how,' Sullivan Smith sighed heavily, 'how, I'd ask, are ladies to be protected from the bully?'
He was beset: 'So it was all for us? all in consideration for our benefit?'
He mournfully exclaimed: 'Why, surely!'
'That is the funeral apology of the Rod, at the close of every barbarous chapter,' said Diana.
'Too fine in mind, too fat in body; that is a consequence with men, dear madam. The conqueror stands to his weapons, or he loses his possessions.'
'Mr. Sullivan Smith jumps at his pleasure from the special to the general, and will be back, if we follow him, Lady Pennon. It is the trick men charge to women, showing that they can resemble us.'
Lady Pennon thumped her knee. 'Not a bit. There's no resemblance, and they know nothing of us.'
'Women are a blank to them, I believe,' said Whitmonby, treacherously bowing;and Westlake said:
'Traces of a singular scrawl have been observed when they were held in close proximity to the fire.'
'Once, on the top of a coach,' Whitmonby resumed, 'I heard a comely dame of the period when summers are ceasing threatened by her husband with a divorce, for omitting to put sandwiches in their luncheon-basket. She made him the inscrutable answer: "Ah, poor man! you will go down ignorant to your grave!" We laughed, and to this day I cannot tell you why.'
'That laugh was from a basket lacking provision; and I think we could trace our separation to it,' Diana said to Lady Pennon, who replied: 'They expose themselves; they get no nearer to the riddle.'