Meanwhile Selina began to read us extracts from Professor Henri Bergson on “Laughter.” Selina is a serious person without, so far as I have ever discovered, a grain of humour in her composition. These are just the people who read theories of laughter. It is a mystery to them, and they desire to have it explained. “A laughable expression of the face,” began Selina, “is one that will make us think of something rigid and, so to speak, coagulated, in the wonted mobility of the face. What we shall see will be an ingrained twitching or a fixed grimace. One would say that the person’s whole moral life has crystallized into this particular cast of features.” “I wonder whether Mr. George Robey’s whole moral life has,” dropped Patty, innocently. “And who, pray,” said Selina, with her heavy eyebrows making semi-circles of indignant surprise, “is Mr. George Robey?” I sat silent. I had just brought my niece back from a short but variegated stay in town. I knew, but I would not tell. “Why, Selina, dear,” answered Patty, “you are the very image of him with your eyebrows rounded like that. He is always glaring at the audience that way.” “_Will_ you, Patty,” said Selina, now thoroughly roused, “be good enough to tell me who he _is_?” “Well, he’s an actor, who makes the very faces your Bergson describes. Uncle took me to see him in a” (catching my warning eye)—“in a sort of historical play. He was Louis XV., at Versailles, you know.” “H’m,” said Selina, “it’s rather a doubtful period; and the very best historical plays do make such a hash of history. Was it in blank verse? Blank verse will do much to mitigate the worst period.” “N-no,” answered Patty, “I don’t think it was in blank verse. I didn’t notice; did you, Uncle?” I tried to prevaricate. “Well, you never know about blank verse on the stage nowadays, nearly all the actors turn it into prose. Mr. Robey may have been speaking blank verse, as though it were prose. The best artists cannot escape the fashion of the moment, you know.” “But what did he do?” insisted Selina, “What was the action of the play?” Patty considered. “I don’t remember his doing anything, Selina, dear, but chuck the ladies of the Court under the chin. Oh, yes, and he made eyes at them affectionately.” “A pretty sort of historical play, on my word!” exclaimed Selina. “Oh, it wasn’t _all_ historical, Selina, dear,” said Patty, sweetly. “A lot of it was thoroughly modern, and Mr. Robey wore a frock coat, and such a funny little bowler hat, and another time he was a street musician in Venice with a stuffed monkey pinned to his coat-tails.”