We women know"-- with a sage nod.

"They were wild little savages when I took them in hand first--weren't you, Maisie?
Do you remember, dear, how you broke the looking-glass in the boudoir, like an untamed young monkey?
Talking of monkeys, Mr.Cotswould, HAVE you seen those delightful, clever, amusing French pictures at that place in Suffolk Street?
There's a man there--a Parisian--I forget his honoured name--Leblanc, or Lenoir, or Lebrun, or something--but he's a most humorous artist, and he paints monkeys and storks and all sorts of queer beasties ALMOST as quaintly and expressively as you do.

Mind, I say ALMOST, for I never will allow that any Frenchman could do anything QUITE so good, quite so funnily mock-human, as your marabouts and professors." "What a charming hostess Mrs.Le Geyt makes," the painter observed to me, after lunch.

"Such tact! Such discrimination!...

AND, what a devoted stepmother!" "She is one of the local secretaries of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," I said, drily.
"And charity begins at home," Hilda Wade added, in a significant aside.
We walked home together as far as Stanhope Gate.