immediately, followed
by three footmen--just as it happened when you last called on the_
Duchess--_and sets out the tea.)_

_Hostess (holding up the property lump of sugar in the tongs)_. Sugar?

_Guest (luckily)_. No, thanks.

_Hostess replaces lump and inclines empty teapot over tray for a moment;
then hands him a cup painted brown inside--thus deceiving the gentleman
with the telescope in the upper circle_.

_Guest (touching his lips with the cup and then returning it to its
saucer)_. Well, I must be going.

_Re-enter_ Butler _and three_ Footmen, _who remove the tea-things_.

_Hostess (to_ Guest). Good-bye; so glad you could come. [_Exit_ Guest.]

His visit has been short, but it has been very thrilling while it lasted.

Tea is the most usual meal on the stage, for the reason that it is the
least expensive, the property lump of sugar being dusted and used again
on the next night. For a stage dinner a certain amount of genuine
sponge-cake has to be made up to look like fish, chicken or cutlet. In
novels the hero has often "pushed his meals away untasted," but no stage
hero would do anything so unnatural as this. The etiquette is to have two
bites before the butler and the three footmen whisk away the plate. Two
bites are made, and the bread is crumbled, with an air of great
eagerness; indeed, one feels that in real life the guest would clutch
hold of the footman and say, "Half a mo', old chap, I haven't _nearly_
finished"; but the actor is better schooled than this. Besides, the thing
is coming back again as chicken directly.

But it is the cigarette which chiefly has brought the modern drama to its
present state of perfection. Without the stage cigarette many an epigram
would pass unnoticed, many an actor's hands would be much more
noticeable; and the man who works the fireproof safety curtain would lose
even the small amount of excitement which at present attaches to his job.

Now although it is possible, in the case of a few men at the top of the
profession, to leave the conduct of the cigarette entirely to the actor,
you will find it much more satisfactory to insert in the stage directions
the particular movements (with match and so forth) that you wish carried
out. Let us assume that Lord Arthur asks Lord John what a cynic is--the
question of what a cynic is having arisen quite naturally in the course
of the plot. Let us assume further that you wish Lord John to reply, "A
cynic is a man who knows the p