RD W. Out there one used to know what one's men felt.

LADY W. [Staring] My dear boy, I really don't think you ought to
see the Press; it always upsets you.

LORD W. Well! Why should you and I be going to eat ourselves silly
to improve the condition of the sweated, when----

LADY W. [Calmly] When they're going to "improve" ours, if we don't
look out. We've got to get in first, Bill.

LORD W. [Gloomily] I know. It's all fear. That's it! Here we
are, and here we shall stay--as if there'd never been a war.

LADY W. Well, thank heaven there's no "front" to a revolution. You
and I can go to glory together this time. Compact! Anything that's
on, I'm to abate in.

LORD W. Well, in reason.

LADY W. No, in rhyme, too.

LORD W. I say, your dress!

LADY W. Yes, Poulder tried to stop me, but I wasn't going to have
you blown up without me.

LORD W. You duck. You do look stunning. Give us a kiss!

LADY W. [Starting back] Oh, Bill! Don't touch me--your hands!

LORD W. Never mind, my mouth's clean.

They stand about a yard apart, and banding their faces towards each
other, kiss on the lips.

L. ANNE. [Appearing suddenly from the "communication trench," and
tip-toeing silently between them] Oh, Mum! You and Daddy ARE
wasting time! Dinner's ready, you know!

CURTAIN

ACT II

The single room of old MRS. LEMMY, in a small grey house in
Bethnal Green, the room of one cumbered by little save age, and
the crockery debris of the past. A bed, a cupboard, a coloured
portrait of Queen Victoria, and--of all things--a fiddle,
hanging on the wall. By the side of old MRS. LEMMY in her chair
is a pile of corduroy trousers, her day's sweated sewing, and a
small table. She sits with her back to the window, through
which, in the last of the light, the opposite side of the little
grey street is visible under the evening sky, where hangs one
white cloud shaped like a horned beast. She is still sewing,
and her lips move. Being old, and lonely, she has that habit of
talking to herself, distressing to those who cannot overhear.
From the smack of her tongue she was once a West Country cottage
woman; from the look of her creased, parchmenty face, she was
once a pretty girl with black eyes, in which there is still much
vitality. The door is opened with difficulty and a little girl