principal part Miss Rose Euclid, perhaps the
greatest emotional actress the English-speaking peoples had ever had,
but who unfortunately had not been sufficiently seen of late on the
London stage, and that this would be her first appearance after her
recent artistic successes in the United States. And lastly that Mr.
Marrier (whose name would be remembered in connection with ... etc.,
etc.) was Mr. E.H. Machin's acting manager and technical adviser.
Edward Henry could trace the hand of Marrier in all the paragraphs.
Marrier had lost no time.

Mrs. Machin, senior, came into the drawing-room just as he was
adjusting the "Tannhaeuser" overture to the mechanician. The piece was
one of his major favourites.

"This is no place for you, my lad," said Mrs. Machin, grimly, glancing
round the room. "But I came to tell ye as th' mutton's been cooling at
least five minutes. You gave out as you were hungry."

"Keep your hair on, mother," said he, springing up.

Barely twelve hours earlier he had been mincing among the elect and
the select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic;
among the lah-di-dah and Kensingtonian accents; among rouged lips and
blue hose and fixed simperings; in the centre of the universe. And he
had conducted himself with considerable skill accordingly. Nobody,
on the previous night, could have guessed from the cut of his fancy
waistcoat or the judiciousness of his responses to remarks about
verse, that his wife often wore a white apron, or that his mother
was--the woman she was! He had not unskilfully caught many of the
tricks of that metropolitan environment. But now they all fell away
from him, and he was just Edward Henry--nay, he was almost the old
Denry again.

"Who chose this mutton?" he asked as he bent over the juicy and rich
joint and cut therefrom exquisite thick slices with a carving-knife
like a razor.

"_I_ did, if ye want to know," said his mother. "Anything amiss with
it?" she challenged.

"No. It's fine."

"Yes," said she. "I'm wondering whether you get aught as good as that
in those grand hotels as you call 'em."

"We don't," said Edward Henry. First, it was true; and secondly, he
was anxious to be propitiatory, for he had a plan to further.

He looked at his wife. She was not talkative, but she had received
him in the hall with every detail of affection, if a little
absent-mindedly owing to the state of the house. She had not
been caustic, like his mother, about