Act I - Page 2

rest of
the room, and when he sees it, as for instance on his lonely way to
bed, he often stares long and hard at it before chuckling
uncomfortably.

There are five ladies, and one only of them is elderly, the Mrs. Coade
whom a voice in the darkness has already proclaimed the nicest. She
is the nicest, though the voice was no good judge. Coady, as she is
familiarly called and as her husband also is called, each having for
many years been able to answer for the other, is a rounded old lady
with a beaming smile that has accompanied her from childhood. If she
lives to be a hundred she will pretend to the census man that she is
only ninety-nine. She has no other vice that has not been smoothed
out of existence by her placid life, and she has but one complaint
against the male Coady, the rather odd one that he has long forgotten
his first wife. Our Mrs. Coady never knew the first one but it is she
alone who sometimes looks at the portrait of her and preserves in
their home certain mementoes of her, such as a lock of brown hair,
which the equally gentle male Coady must have treasured once but has
now forgotten. The first wife had been slightly lame, and in their
brief married life he had carried solicitously a rest for her foot,
had got so accustomed to doing this, that after a quarter of a
century with our Mrs. Coady he still finds footstools for her as if
she were lame also. She has ceased to pucker her face over this,
taking it as a kind little thoughtless attention, and indeed with the
years has developed a friendly limp.

Of the other four ladies, all young and physically fair, two are
married. Mrs. Dearth is tall, of smouldering eye and fierce desires,
murky beasts lie in ambush in the labyrinths of her mind, she is a
white-faced gypsy with a husky voice, most beautiful when she is
sullen, and therefore frequently at her best. The other ladies when
in conclave refer to her as The Dearth. Mrs. Purdie is a safer
companion for the toddling kind of man. She is soft and pleading, and
would seek what she wants by laying her head on the loved one's
shoulder, while The Dearth might attain it with a pistol. A brighter
spirit than either is Joanna Trout who, when her affections are not
engaged, has a merry face and figure, but can dismiss them both at
the important moment, which is at the word 'love.' Then Joanna
quivers, her sense of humour ceases to beat and the dullest man may
go ahead. There remains Lady Caroline Laney of the disdainful poise,
lately from the enormously select school where they are taught to
pronounce their r's as w's; nothing else seems to be taught, but for
matrimonial success nothing else is necessary. Every woman who
pronounces r as w will find a mate; it appeals to all that is