“I say, why not have one of the verses of the _real_ ‘Bulbul Ameer’ song brought in each time as an encore? I call that a piece of sheer inspiration, don’t you?” “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Bill Patch grinning; and was further, and unnecessarily, supported by Christopher Ambrey, who said that personally, and speaking quite dispassionately, he called it a piece of sheer senselessness. The “Bulbul Ameer” song was already being given at the beginning, and at the end, and played at all sorts of critical moments throughout the piece, and surely there was no need to hear it more than forty-eight times in one evening? “Do you really mean that one song is to be played forty-eight times?” said Mumma. “Fancy! forty-eight times! Do you hear that, Puppa? Why, we shall all know it quite well.” General Kendal gave no assent to this proposition, reasonable though it was. He had been fidgeting for some time. “I say, Patch, do you remember a pair of boots of mine?” “Hessian boots,” put in Mumma, helpfully. “That’s right, Hessian boots. It’s not of the slightest consequence, of course, but you don’t often see those Hessian boots about, nowadays. How would it be to give them some sort of prominence? Just draw the attention of the audience to them, in some way, if you know what I mean. I should think it could be worked in, somehow.” “Why not make an allusion to Puss-in-Boots--something of that kind? All those old stories come more or less out of the Arabian Nights, don’t they, and this is supposed to take place in the East?” “If you’re going to have Puss-in-Boots, you may as well have Dick Whittington,” said Dolly Kendal brightly, and quite as though she was making a relevant and reasonable observation. “I don’t somehow quite _see_ Puss-in-Boots, or even Dick Whittington, in the piece,” said Nancy Fazackerly--but she said it with so much hesitation, in her fear of hurting anybody’s feelings, that one quite felt they might very well have been there all the time, without our having been clever enough to recognize them. “Why not little Bo-Peep, while we’re about it?” Sallie asked sardonically. “Do let’s get on, instead of wasting time like this.” I saw Mrs. Fazackerly gaze at her with fearful admiration. Perhaps Claire saw it too--and she does not ever think that admiration, of any kind, is good for Sallie. “I don’t want to interrupt,” she began smoothly, and I got ready to be interrupted at once. “But you do the whole thing so well, Sallie darling, that it’s a shame it shouldn’t be absolutely perfect.” Claire has not yet discovered that, to Sallie’s generation, tact is as objectionable as plain speaking is to her own. “I want you to see how a _real_ Eastern maiden, which is what you’re supposed to be, would move. You walk like a European. Now look at me.” Of course, that was all she wanted. We looked at her.