black poodle,
Jock a fox-terrier, and the borzoi, of course, will be a borzoi. During
the third verse Cousin Teresa will come on alone, and the dogs will be
drawn across by themselves from the opposite wing; then Cousin Teresa
will catch on to the singer and go off-stage in one direction, while the
dogs' procession goes off in the other, crossing en route, which is
always very effective. There'll be a lot of applause there, and for the
fourth verse Cousin Teresa will come on in sables and the dogs will all
have coats on. Then I've got a great idea for the fifth verse; each of
the dogs will be led on by a Nut, and Cousin Teresa will come on from the
opposite side, crossing en route, always effective, and then she turns
round and leads the whole lot of them off on a string, and all the time
every one singing like mad:

Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.

Tum-Tum! Drum business on the two last syllables. I'm so excited, I
shan't sleep a wink to-night. I'm off to-morrow by the ten-fifteen. I've
wired to Hermanova to lunch with me."

If any of the rest of the family felt any excitement over the creation of
Cousin Teresa, they were signally successful in concealing the fact.

"Poor Lucas does take his silly little ideas seriously," said Colonel
Harrowcluff afterwards in the smoking-room.

"Yes," said his younger son, in a slightly less tolerant tone, "in a day
or two he'll come back and tell us that his sensational masterpiece is
above the heads of the public, and in about three weeks' time he'll be
wild with enthusiasm over a scheme to dramatise the poems of Herrick or
something equally promising."

And then an extraordinary thing befell. In defiance of all precedent
Lucas's glowing anticipations were justified and endorsed by the course
of events. If Cousin Teresa was above the heads of the public, the
public heroically adapted itself to her altitude. Introduced as an
experiment at a dull moment in a new _revue_, the success of the item was
unmistakable; the calls were so insistent and uproarious that even Lucas'
ample devisings of additional "business" scarcely sufficed to keep pace
with the demand. Packed houses on successive evenings confirmed the
verdict of the first night audience, stalls and boxes filled
significantly just before the turn came on, and emptied significantly
after the last _encore_ had been given. The manager tearfully
acknowledged that Cousin Teresa