nsolence
and fatuity is for his stage purpose rather crudely coloured, but who shall
say that the doctrine that a man in khaki who has been an elementary
schoolmaster or a tailor is a man for a' that, is quite universally
accepted in the best circles even in this year of grace? _Betty_, now a
grown girl in the cynical stage, revenges herself with feline savagery on
the knight of the shears for the imagined slight of his defection.

Act III. is dated 19? just after peace is declared. The tailor is not (as I
half expected) back in his shop, but a _Brigadier-General Smith, V.C._, is
being invested with the freedom of Sheffingham and is making a spirited
attack on the defences of _Betty_. She puts up enough of a fight to ensure
a good Third Act, and capitulates charmingly to the delight, now, of all
the _Broughton_ household--butler included. I hope Mr. TERRY is right and
that the places taken in this great war game of _General Post_ and the
values registered will have permanence.

I won't deny that the excellent moral of the play goes far to disarm one's
critical faculty. Why not confess that one lost one's heart to the nicest
tailor since _Evan Harrington_? Indeed, Mr. TULLY (always, I find, quite
admirable in characterisation, and that no mere matter of outward trick,
but duly charged with feeling) made just such a decent, lovable, sideless
officer as it has been the pride of the nation of shopkeepers to produce in
the day of challenge. Whoever was it dared cast Mr. MCKINNEL for the part
of a weak kindly old ass of a baronet, without any ruggedness or violence
in his composition? Congratulations to the unknown perspicacious hero and
to Mr. MCKINNEL! Miss MADGE TITHERADGE flapped prettily as a flapper; bit
cleanly and cruelly in her biting mood; surrendered most engagingly. This
is less than justice. She used her queer caressing voice and her reserves
of emotional power to fine effect. Miss LILIAN BRAITHWAITE made her _Lady
Broughton_ nearly credible and less "unsympathetic" than was just. Mr.
DANIELL is new to me. He played one of those difficult foil parts with a
really nice discretion.

The audience was genuinely pleased. It dragged from the author a becomingly
modest acknowledgment. He _did_ owe a great deal to his players, but a
writer of stage plays need not be ashamed of that. T.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Ethel (playing at grown-ups)._ "IS YOUR HUSBAND IN THE WAR,
MRS. BROWN?"