Evita!

. . . Evita came downstairs looking so elegant she left them stunned. She was wearing a tailored black and white checkered suit with velvet trimmings. Although her vocabulary was still shaky, she already had a quick, sharp, fearsome tongue.

"What brings you here, ladies?" she asked, seating herself on a piano stool.

One of the ladies, dressed in black, with a hat from which birds' wings soared, answered haughtily:

"Exhaustion. We've been waiting over three hours."

Evita gave an innocent smile:

"Only three hours. You're lucky. There are two ambassadors upstairs who've been waiting for five hours. Let's not waste time. If you're tired, you'd no doubt like to leave as soon as possible."

"A sacred obligation brings us here," another of the ladies with a fox stole draped around her neck said. "Out of respect for a tradition nearly a century old, we are offering you the presidency of the Benevolent Association. . ."

". . . despite the fact that you're too young," the lady with the feather hat put in. "And perhaps, inasmuch as you were an actress, you may not be familiar with the work we do. There are eighty-seven of us ladies."

Evita rose to her feet.

"You must understand that I am unable to accept," she said cuttingly. "This isn't the sort of thing I go in for. I don't know how to play bridge, I don't care for tea and petit-fours. I'd embarrass you. Find someone like yourselves."

The lady with the stole held out, with relief, a gloved hand.

"If that is your decision, we'll leave."

"You're forgetting tradition," Evita said, ignoring the farewell. "How will you get along without an honorary president?"

"Would you care to suggest someone?" the lady with the fox said superciliously.

"Appoint my mother. She's fifty. She isn't a b----, as this letter phrases it," she answered, spreading the copy of it out on the table, "but she is better-spoken than all of you are."

And turning around, she gracefully climbed the stairs.