keenest
detective alive. As I've tried to convey to your practical mind, it's
the spirit of the girl--the spirit of comedy, that I've dramatized--not
a girl you take out to supper only to find that she has no wit, no
charm, no anything but a monstrous appetite for indigestible food and a
silly ambition to play roles the gods never intended her to play. In
that pantomime she was a frolic, the clown's daughter, and, though
nobody saw it, she was the whole piece, the elusive sprite that could
evoke laughter and tears by a gesture, a lifting of the brows, a
grimace. By utterly different methods in 'Honourable Women' she proved
her wide range of appeal. The chap who produced 'Honourable Women' told
me that after the first rehearsal Bayley, the author, begged him for
God's sake to let the girl do it her own way, so as not to lose her
freshness and spontaneity. Hers was the one true characterization in the
piece. When Terry was in her prime you remember how we used to say that
only one bird sang like that, and from paradise it flew? Well, this bird
sings on the same branch! Her voice was her charm made audible! She's
the most natural being I ever saw on the stage, and she can _look_ more
comedy than anybody else I ever saw act!"

"Rave some more!" I pleaded. "You never talked better in your life."

"Don't be an ass," he said sourly. "Let's forget her and take a squint
at your affairs. Just what do you mean to do with yourself?"

"My shoulder still creaks a little, and the doctors advise me to sit
around for a while. They offered me some jobs in Washington, but desk
work and inspection duty are too tame after a couple of years spent in
star climbing. The doctors tell me to cultivate repose for a few months
and maybe they'll pass me into our flying corps, but they don't promise
anything. I'm going up to Barton-on-the-Sound and I'll camp in the
garage on my uncle's place. You remember that I built the thing myself,
and the quarters are good enough for a busted veteran."

"Your uncle played you a nasty trick," interrupted Searles; "getting
married and then adding to the crime by dying. You couldn't beat that
for general spitefulness."

"Do you remember the immortal lines:

"'Oh, skip your dear uncle!'
The Bellman exclaimed
As he angrily tingled his bell"?

"Oh, I'm not knocking the dead!" he protested. "Mr. Bashford always
struck me as a pretty decent, square sort of chap, and not at all the
familiar grou