"It would have meant progress," said Margaret. She looked imperiously
lovely, as she sat there all frilled about with white lace and silk
with the leaf-shadows playing over the slender whiteness. She lifted
one little hand tragically. "Progress," she repeated. "Progress
beyond Mrs. George B. Slade's and Mrs. Sturtevant's and Miss Bessy
Dicky's, and that is precisely what we need."

Annie Eustace gazed wistfully upon her friend. "Yes," she agreed,
"you are quite right, Margaret. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Sturtevant and
poor Bessy Dicky and all the other members are very good, and we
think highly of them, but I too feel that we all travel in a rut
sometimes. Perhaps we all walk too much the same way." Then suddenly
Annie burst into a peal of laughter. She had a sense of humour which
was startling. It was the one thing which environment had not been
able to subdue, or even produce the effect of submission. Annie
Eustace was easily amused. She had a scent for the humorous like a
hound's for game, and her laugh was irrepressible.

"What on earth are you laughing at now?" inquired Margaret Edes
irritably.

"I was thinking," Annie replied chokingly, "of some queer long-legged
birds I saw once in a cage in a park. I really don't know whether
they were ibises or cranes, or survivals of species, but anyway, the
little long-legged ones all walked just the same way in a file behind
a tall long-legged one, who walked precisely in the same way, and all
of a sudden, I seemed to see us all like that. Only you are not in
the least like that tall, long-legged bird, Margaret, and you are the
president of the Zenith Club."