MARY BROOME: A COMEDY, IN FOUR ACTS, BY ALLAN MONKHOUSE BOSTON: JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY LONDON: SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD. 3 ADAM STREET, ADELPHI MCMXIII _First Impression, June,_ 1912 _Second Impression, January,_ 1913 _Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U.S.A._ _All rights reserved_ "Mary Broome" was first produced by Miss Horniman's Company at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, on October 9th, 1911, with the following cast:-- SHEILA RAY Edyth Goodall ADA TIMBRELL Hilda Bruce Potter EDGAR TIMBRELL Herbert Lomas MARY BROOME Irene Rooke LEONARD TIMBRELL Milton Rosmer MRS. TIMBRELL Ada King EDWARD TIMBRELL Charles Bibby MAID Doris Bateman MR. PENDLETON Cecil Brooking MRS. PENDLETON Louise Holbrook MRS. GREAVES Hilda Davies JOHN BROOME Edward Landor MRS. BROOME Muriel Pratt The Play produced by STANLEY DREWITT CHARACTERS EDWARD TIMBRELL MRS. TIMBRELL EDGAR TIMBRELL LEONARD TIMBRELL ADA TIMBRELL SHEILA RAY (_afterwards Mrs. Edgar Timbrell_) MARY BROOME (_afterwards Mrs. Leonard Timbrell_) JOHN BROOME MRS. BROOME MR. PENDLETON MRS. PENDLETON MRS. GREAVES A MAID ACT I. [_The Drawing-room in a biggish suburban villa--The furniture, &c., are in middling taste. EDGAR TIMBRELL, an ordinary young man of nearly thirty in neat tweeds is sprawling self-consciously on the sofa. ADA and SHEILA are opening a parcel. They are the ordinary middle-class young women who might develop in all manner of unexpected ways and usually do not._] SHEILA. Come and look, Edgar. ADA. He's only pretending not to care. SHEILA. Lend me your knife. [_She takes it from him and cuts the string._] I brought this over without opening it just to let you see it too. EDGAR. For Heaven's sake remember who sent them all. SHEILA. It's all right. Ada's keeping a list. EDGAR. Well, get all the fun out of it you can. You won't often have the chance of being married. SHEILA. [_Opening the parcel._] Oh! how nice! What do you mean, Edgar? I've had lots of chances. EDGAR. You can't go on having them now, though. ADA. Let me see, Sheila. SHEILA. No, that's why I want everything to be nice. Instead of all those chances I want one delightful reality. A sweet little tea caddy; that's two; the other was bigger. One delightful reality, Edgar. You've got to see to that. EDGAR. Oh! I'll make a jolly good husband. SHEILA. I wasn't thinking of that. I was only thinking of the wedding. One thing at a time. I want to have the prettiest wedding that ever was. Something that I can look back to. No hitches and stupidities and uglinesses. ADA. Some people like Indian tea. You could have Indian tea in that one. [_Enter MARY BROOME, the housemaid. She is a comely young woman in the housemaid's usual afternoon dress and with the housemaid's usual self-possession._] MARY. A parcel for you, sir. EDGAR. Thank you. Will you put it down--anywhere. ADA. Another present! No.