' Miss Dayrell,' she was saying, ' would you mind not turning your back completely on the audience when you speak those lines. Mr. Yates '—this was the leading gentleman—' I am so sorry to interrupt your conversation, but my throat is rather sore this morning, and I cannot hear myself speak if you talk so loud to your friends. Yes; I think, as you are not on the stage just now, it would be better if you left it. Yes, Miss Dayrell, you see these are perhaps the most important lines in the play which you have to speak, and the audience will have a better chance of understanding it if you let them hear what Mr. Farquar has given you to say. Mr. Farquar, I am afraid the second act is about twice as long as it ought to be. I have cut some of it—at least, with your approval, I propose to cut some of it.'
Mr. Farquar sighed heavily in the stalls. He had spent the greater part of the last three nights in writing more of the second act, because it was not long enough.
' Thank you,' continued Mrs. Emsworth, interpreting the sigh as silence. ' You will see my alterations when we get to them. Would you kindly begin, Miss Dayrell, at “ If I had a pitch-fork.” '
Suddenly her voice changed to a wheedling tenderness.
' And if my own Teddy Roosevelt hasn't come down of his own delicious accord to see his aunt in her pretty theatre! Teddy, the world is very evil, and my mother bids me bind my hair. I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but I had to say a word to Popsie Tootsicums. Now, dear Miss Dayrell, let's begin again. You enter. Excellent. You turn. Yes, that's exactly what I want. Now.'
A murmur of relief went round, and the faded actors and actresses raised their drooped heads as when a shower has passed over a drought-dried garden. And Teddy R., the angel in disguise, sat sparsely down in the middle
