it
up. [Exit.

Yardsley. Thanks. (Looks about the room.) Everything here seems to
be right.

Perkins returns.

Mrs. Perkins (rehearsing). And henceforth, my lord, let us
understand one another.

Perkins. Certainly, my dear. I'll go and have myself translated.
Would you prefer me in French, German, or English?

Yardsley. I hope it goes all right to-night. But, I must say, I
don't like the prospect. This beastly behavior of Henderson's has
knocked me out.

Perkins. What's the matter with Henderson?

Mrs. Perkins. He hasn't withdrawn, has he?

Yardsley. That's just what he has done. He sent me word this
morning.

Mrs. Perkins. But what excuse does he offer? At the last moment,
too!

Yardsley. None at all--absolutely. There was some airy persiflage
in his note about having to go to Boston at six o'clock.
Grandmother's sick or something. He writes so badly I couldn't make
out whether she was rich or sick. I fancy it's a little of both.
Possibly if she wasn't rich he wouldn't care so much when she fell
ill. That's the trouble with these New-Englanders, anyhow--they've
always got grandmothers to fall down at crucial moments. Next time I
go into this sort of thing it'll be with a crowd without known
ancestors.

Perkins. 'Tisn't Chet's fault, though. You don't suspect him of
having poisoned his grandmother just to get out of playing, do you?

Mrs. Perkins. Oh, Thaddeus, do be serious!

Perkins. I was never more so, my dear. Poisoning one's grandmother
is no light crime.

Yardsley. Well, I've a notion that the whole thing is faked up.
Henderson has an idea that he's a little tin Booth, and just because
I called him down the other night at our first rehearsal he's mad.
That's the milk in the cocoanut, I think. He's one of those fellows
you can't tell anything to, and when I kicked because he wore a white
tie with a dinner coat, he got mad and said he was going to dress the
part his own way or not at all.

Perkins. I think he was right.

Yardsley. Oh yes, of course I'm never right. What am I stage-
manager for?

Perkins. Oh, as for that, of course, you are the one in authority,
but you were wrong about the white tie and the dinner coat. He was a
bogus earl, an adventurer, wasn't he?

Yardsley. Yes, he was, but--

Perkins. Well, no real earl would wear a white tie with a dinner
coat unless he were visiting in America. I grant you that if he were
going to a reception