Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/120

The Club of Queer Trades rusty), I remembered the mysteries of the Bona Dea and their strange female freemasonry. I remembered the witches' Sabbaths. I was just in my absurd light-headedness, trying to remember a line of verse about Diana's nymphs, when Miss Mowbray threw her arm round me from behind. The moment it held me I knew it was not a woman's arm.

"Miss Brett—or what I had called Miss Brett—was standing in front of me with a big revolver in her hand and a broad grin on her face. Miss James was still leaning against the door, but had fallen into an attitude so totally new, and so totally unfeminine, that it gave one a shock. She was kicking her heels, with her hands in her pockets and her cap on one side. She was a man. I mean he was a wo—no, that is, I saw that instead of being a woman she—he, I mean—that is, it was a man."

Mr. Shorter became indescribably flurried and flapping in endeavoring to arrange these genders and his plaid shawl at the same 104