uires a great
deal of moral courage to leave in a marked manner in the middle of the
second act, when your carriage isn't ordered till twelve. And it would
commence with wolves worrying something on a lonely waste--you wouldn't
see them, of course; but you would hear them snarling and scrunching, and
I should arrange to have a wolfy fragrance suggested across the
footlights. It would look so well on the programmes, 'Wolves in the
first act, by Jamrach.' And old Lady Whortleberry, who never misses a
first night, would scream. She's always been nervous since she lost her
first husband. He died quite abruptly while watching a county cricket
match; two and a half inches of rain had fallen for seven runs, and it
was supposed that the excitement killed him. Anyhow, it gave her quite a
shock; it was the first husband she'd lost, you know, and now she always
screams if anything thrilling happens too soon after dinner. And after
the audience had heard the Whortleberry scream the thing would be fairly
launched."

"And the plot?"

"The plot," said Reginald, "would be one of those little everyday
tragedies that one sees going on all round one. In my mind's eye there
is the case of the Mudge-Jervises, which in an unpretentious way has
quite an Enoch Arden intensity underlying it. They'd only been married
some eighteen months or so, and circumstances had prevented their seeing
much of each other. With him there was always a foursome or something
that had to be played and replayed in different parts of the country, and
she went in for slumming quite as seriously as if it was a sport. With
her, I suppose, it was. She belonged to the Guild of the Poor Dear
Souls, and they hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman.
No one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, and that is why the
competition is so keen. You can rescue charwomen by fifties with a
little tea and personal magnetism, but with washerwomen it's different;
wages are too high. This particular laundress, who came from Bermondsey
or some such place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they thought
at last that she might be safely put in the window as a specimen of
successful work. So they had her paraded at a drawing-room "At Home" at
Agatha Camelford's; it was sheer bad luck that some liqueur chocolates
had been turned loose by mistake among the refreshments--really liqueur
chocolates, with very little chocolate. And of course the old soul fo