"Well, look what we've been through together! If the piece doesn't succeed, I'm afraid it'll be a serious business for him. He'll be very hard up." Esther shook her head over Arthur when he came to dinner. "I knew you were a man of fashion! Now you're blossoming out as a theatrical speculator! Where does the law come in?" "Next Wednesday morning at the very latest--and whatever has happened to _Did You Say Mrs.?_ Only, if it's a tumble, I shan't have the money to go circuit, and--well, I hope your husband will get his rent, but I expect he'd be wiser to kick me out of his chambers." "As bad as that? Then we really must pray, Judith, for Frank's sake as well as Arthur's!" "Do tell us about the play! Give us an idea of it." "Oh, well, the plot's not the great thing, you know. It's the way it's written. And Ayesha Layard and Willie Spring are so good. Well, there's a dancing club--a respectable one. A man may take a man, but he may only take a woman if she's his wife or sister. The man Spring plays is persuaded to take a friend and his best girl in, and to let the girl call herself Mrs. Skewes--Skewes is Spring's name in the piece. Well, of course, as soon as he's done that, simply everybody Skewes knows begins to turn up--his rich uncle, the rich girl he wants to marry, his village parson--all the lot. And then the other man's people weigh in, and everybody gets mixed--and so on. And there's a comic waiter who used to know Flo (Ayesha Layard plays Flo, of course) and insists on writing to her mother to say she's married. Oh, it's all awfully well worked out!" "I'm sure it'll be very amusing," said Esther Norton Ward politely. "But isn't it rather like that farce they had at the--the Piccadilly, wasn't it?--a year or two ago?" "Oh no! I remember the piece you mean; but that wasn't a dancing club--that was an hotel." "So it was. I forgot," said Esther, smiling. Arthur burst into a laugh. "I'm a fool! Of course it's been done a hundred times. But Beverley's got in a lot of good stuff. In the second act Flo has hidden in Skewes' bedroom, and of course everybody turns up there, and he has to get rid of them by pretending he's going to have a bath--keeps taking his coat off, to make 'em clear out." Arthur chuckled at the remembrance. "But of course Ayesha's the finest thing. Her innocent cheek is ripping!" "Why does she want to hide in his room?" "She took another woman's bag from the club by accident, and the manager has his suspicions about her and consults the police. But I won't tell you any more, or it'll spoil the evening." "I think we know quite enough to go on with," laughed Esther. "I wish Frank could come with us, but he's got a meeting every night next week. Why don't you go down with him one night? I think it would amuse you." "I will, like a shot, if he'll take me. I'm not sure, though, that I'm a Conservative." "That doesn't matter. Besides Frank will make you one. He's very persuasive."