num_pages: 72
description: XINGU AND OTHER STORIES - 1916 - TABLE OF C O N T E N T S - Coming Home r 111 Autres Temps . . . IV Kerf 02 v The Long Run VI The Triumph of Night v11 The Choice VIII Bunner Sisters - XINGU RS. BALLINGER is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had . founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of. distinguished strangers became one of its accepted functions in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated Osric Dane, on the day of her arrival in Hillbr - i . d ge, an invitation to be present at the next meeting. The club was to meet at Mrs. Ballingers. The other members, behind her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for 4 the entertainment of celebrities while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fa11 back on. Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded it as one ofPher obligations to enter-P I X I N G U tain the Lulich Clob-i ilisthguished guests. Mrs.. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery she was in fact fond of implying that tlie one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense ok duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep a footman clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted that Mrs. Ballinger, whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain Osric Dane. The question of that ladys reception had for a month past profoundly moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the author of The Wings of Death, no forebodings disturbed the conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. The Wings of Death had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluycks suggestion, been chosen as the subject of 4 1 XINGU discussion at the last club meeting, and each membcr had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to appropriate whatever sounded well in the comments of the others. Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the opportunity but it was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club, Mrs.. Roby was a failure. It a11 comes, as Miss Van Vluyck put it, of accepting a woman on a mans estimation. Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from a prolonged sojourn in exotic landsthe other ladies no longer took the trouble to remember where-had been heralded by the distinguished biologist, Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever met and the members of the Lunch Club, impressed by an encomium that carried the weight of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the Professors social sympathies would follow the line of his professional bent, had seized the chance of annexing a biological member. Their disillusionment was complete. At Miss Van Vluycks first off-hand mention of the pterodactyl Mrs...
language: English
title: Xingu
titlecomplete: Xingu
ratings_count: 7
publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.