Detailing certain Prudential Measures taken during the Panic incident to a Late Threatened Invasion

I HOPE,” said Mrs Albert, “that I am as free to admit my errors in judgment as another. Evidently there has been a mistake in this matter, and it is equally obvious that I am the one who must have made it. I did not need to have this pointed out to me, Dudley. What I looked to you for was advice, counsel, sympathy. You seem not to realise at all how important this is to me. A false step now may ruin everything—and you simply sit there and grin!”

“My dear sister,” replied Uncle Dudley, smoothing his face, “the smile was involuntary. It shall not recur. I was only thinking of Albert’s enthusiasm for the——”

“Yes, I know!” put in Mrs Albert; “for that girl with the zouave jacket——”

“And the scarlet petticoat,” prompted Uncle Dudley.

“And the crinoline,” said the lady.

“O, he did not insist upon that. I recall his exact words. ‘Whether this under-garment,’ he said, ‘be made of some stiff material like horsehair, or by means of steel hoops, is a mere question of detail.’ No, Albert expressly kept an open mind on that point.”

“I agree with you,” remarked Mrs Albert coldly, “to the extent that he certainly does keep his mind on it. He has now reverted to the subject, I should think, at least twenty times. I am not so blind as you may imagine. I notice that that Mr Labouchere also keeps on referring, every week, to another girl in her zouave jacket, whom he remembers with equal fondness, apparently.”

“Yes,” put in Uncle Dudley, “those words about the ‘stiff material like horsehair’ were in Truth. I daresay Albert simply read them there, and just unconsciously repeated them. We often do inadvertent, unthinking things of that sort.”

Mrs Albert shook her head. “It is nothing to me, of course,” she said, “but I cannot help feeling that the middle-aged father of a family might concentrate his thoughts upon something nobler, something higher, than the recollection of the charms of a red petticoat, thirty years ago. That is so characteristic of men. They cannot discuss a question broadly——”

“Think not?” queried Uncle Dudley, with interest. “You should listen at the keyhole sometime, after you have led the ladies out from dinner.”

“I mean personally, in a general way. They always particularise. Albert, for example, allows all his views on this very important question to be coloured by the fact that when he was a young man he admired some girl in a short red Balmoral petticoat. Whenever conversation touches upon any phase of the whole subject of costume, out he comes with his tiresome adulation of that particular garment. Of course, I ask no questions—I should prefer not to be informed—I try not even to draw inferences—but I notice that Ermyntrude is beginning to observe the persistency with which her father——”

“My good Emily,” urged Uncle Dudley, consolingly, “far back in the Sixties we all liked that girl; we couldn’t help ourselves—she was the only girl there was. And we think of her fondly still—we old fellows—because for us she was also the last there was! When she went out, lo and behold! we too had gone out, not to come back any more. When Albert and I babble about a scarlet petticoat, it is only as a symbol of our own far-away youth. O delicious vision!—the bright, bright red, the skirt that came drooping down over it, not hiding too much that pretty little foot and ankle, the dear zouave jacket moulding itself so delicately to the persuasive encircling arm——”

“Dudley! I really must recall you to yourself,” said Mrs Albert. “We were speaking of quite another matter. I am in a very serious dilemma. First of all, as I explained to you, to please the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn I became one of the Vice-Presidents of the Friendly Divided Skirt Association. You know how useful she can be, in helping to bring Ermyntrude out successfully. And of course everybody knew that, even if we did have them made, we should never wear them. That was quite out of the question.”

“And then?” asked Uncle Dudley.

“Well, then, let me see—yes, next came the Neo-Dress-Improver League. I never ............