commemorative statuary anywhere within three miles of a public

highway."
EXCEPTING MRS. PENTHERBY

It was Reggie Bruttle's own idea for converting what had threatened
to be an albino elephant into a beast of burden that should help him

along the stony road of his finances. "The Limes," which had come
to him by inheritance without any accompanying vision" target="_blank" title="n.供应；规定；条款">provision for its

upkeep, was one of those pretentious, unaccommodating mansions which
none but a man of wealth could afford to live in, and which not one

wealthy man in a hundred would choose on its merits. It might
easily languish in the estate market for years, set round with

noticeboards proclaiming it, in the eyes of a sceptical world, to be
an eminently desirable residence.

Reggie's scheme was to turn it into the headquarters of a prolonged
country-house party, in session during the months from October till

the end of March--a party consisting of young or youngish people of
both sexes, too poor to be able to do much hunting or shooting on a

serious scale, but keen on getting their fill of golf, bridge,
dancing, and occasional theatre-going. No one was to be on the

footing of a paying guest, but every one was to rank as a paying
host; a committee would look after the catering and expenditure, and

an informal sub-committee would make itself useful in helping
forward the amusement side of the scheme.

As it was only an experiment, there was to be a general agreement on
the part of those involved in it to be as lenient and mutually

helpful to one another as possible. Already a promising nucleus,
including one or two young married couples, had been got together,

and the thing seemed to be fairly launched.
"With good management and a little unobtrusive hard work, I think

the thing ought to be a success," said Reggie, and Reggie was one of
those people who are painstaking first and optimistic afterwards.

"There is one rock on which you will unfailingly come to grief,
manage you never so wisely," said Major Dagberry, cheerfully; "the

women will quarrel. Mind you," continued this prophet of disaster,
"I don't say that some of the men won't quarrel too, probably they

will; but the women are bound to. You can't prevent it; it's in the
nature of the sex. The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world,

in a volcanic sense. A woman will endure discomforts, and make
sacrifices, and go without things to an heroicextent, but the one

luxury she will not go without is her quarrels. No matter where she
may be, or how transient her appearance on a scene, she will instal

her feminine feuds as assuredly as a Frenchman would concoct soup in
the waste of the Arctic regions. At the commencement of a sea

voyage, before the male traveller knows half a dozen of his fellow
passengers by sight, the average woman will have started a couple of

enmities, and laid in material for one or two more--provided, of
course, that there are sufficient women aboard to permit quarrelling

in the plural. If there's no one else she will quarrel with the
stewardess. This experiment of yours is to run for six months; in

less than five weeks there will be war to the knife declaring itself
in half a dozen different directions."

"Oh, come, there are only eight women in the party; they won't pick
quarrels quite so soon as that," protested Reggie.

"They won't all originate quarrels, perhaps," conceded the Major,
"but they will all take sides, and just as Christmas is upon you,

with its conventions of peace and good will, you will find yourself
in for a glacial epoch of cold, unforgiving hostility, with an

occasional Etna flare of open warfare. You can't help it, old boy;
but, at any rate, you can't say you were not warned."

The first five weeks of the venture falsified Major Dagberry's
prediction and justified Reggie's optimism. There were, of course,

occasional small bickerings, and the existence of certain jealousies
might be detected below the surface of everydayintercourse; but, on

the whole, the womenfolk got on remarkably well together. There
was, however, a notableexception. It had not taken five weeks for

Mrs. Pentherby to get herself cordiallydisliked by the members of
her own sex; five days had been amply sufficient. Most of the women

declared that they had detested her the moment they set eyes on her;
but that was probably an afterthought.

With the menfolk she got on well enough, without being of the type
of woman who can only bask in male society; neither was she lacking

in the general qualities which make an individual useful and
desirable as a member of a co-operative community. She did not try

to "get the better of" her fellow-hosts by snatching little
advantages or cleverly evading her just contributions; she was not

inclined to be boring or snobbish in the way of personal
reminiscence. She played a fair game of bridge, and her card-room

manners were irreproachable. But wherever she came in contact with
her own sex the light of battle kindled at once; her talent of

arousing animosity seemed to border on positive genius.
Whether the object of her attentions was thick-skinned or sensitive,

quick-tempered or good-natured, Mrs. Pentherby managed to achieve
the same effect. She exposed little weaknesses, she prodded sore

places, she snubbed enthusiasms, she was generally right in a matter
of argument, or, if wrong, she somehow contrived to make her

adversary appear foolish and opinionated. She did, and said,
horrible things in a matter-of-factinnocent way, and she did, and

said, matter-of-factinnocent things in a horrible way. In short,
the unanimousfeminineverdict on her was that she was

objectionable.
There was no question of taking sides, as the Major had anticipated;

in fact, dislike of Mrs. Pentherby was almost a bond of union
between the other women, and more than one threatening disagreement

had been rapidly dissipated by her obvious and malicious attempts to
inflame and extend it; and the most irritating thing about her was

her successful assumption of unruffled composure at moments when the
tempers of her adversaries were with difficulty kept under control.

She made her most scathing remarks in the tone of a tube conductor
announcing that the next station is Brompton Road--the measured,

listless tone of one who knows he is right, but is utterly
indifferent to the fact that he proclaims.

On one occasion Mrs. Val Gwepton, who was not blessed with the most
reposeful of temperaments, fairly let herself go, and gave Mrs.

Pentherby a vivid and truthful resume of her opinion of her. The
object of this unpent storm of accumulated animosity waited

patiently for a lull, and then remarked quietly to the angry little
woman -

"And now, my dear Mrs. Gwepton, let me tell you something that I've
been wanting to say for the last two or three minutes, only you

wouldn't given me a chance; you've got a hairpin dropping out on the
left side. You thin-haired women always find it difficult to keep

your hairpins in."
"What can one do with a woman like that?" Mrs. Val demanded

afterwards of a sympathising audience.
Of course, Reggie received numerous hints as to the unpopularity of

this jarring personality. His sister-in-law openly tackled him on
the subject of her many enormities. Reggie listened with the

attenuated regret that one bestows on an earthquakedisaster in
Bolivia or a crop failure in Eastern Turkestan, events which seem so

distant that one can almost persuade oneself they haven't happened.
"That woman has got some hold over him," opined his sister-in-law,

darkly; "either she is helping him to finance the show, and presumes
on the fact, or else, which Heaven forbid, he's got some queer

infatuation for her. Men do take the most extraordinary fancies."
Matters never came exactly to a crisis. Mrs. Pentherby, as a source

of personal offence, spread herself over so wide an area that no one
woman of the party felt impelled to rise up and declare that she

absolutely refused to stay another week in the same house with her.
What is everybody's tragedy is nobody's tragedy. There was ever a

certain consolation in comparing notes as to specific acts of
offence. Reggie's sister-in-law had the added interest of trying to

discover the secret bond which blunted his condemnation of Mrs.
Pentherby's long catalogue of misdeeds. There was little to go on

from his manner towards her in public, but he remained obstinately
unimpressed by anything that was said against her in private.

With the one exception of Mrs. Pentherby's unpopularity, the house-
party scheme was a success on its first trial, and there was no