Of course nobody believed her; the women were scornful, the men not quite nice, till very young _Lord Stevenage_, the one that was engaged to a notorious baby-snatcher, _Lady Tonbridge_--in a high fever he'd unfortunately said "Yes"--meets her, and you guess the rest. No, you don't. You couldn't possibly guess _Mrs. Badger_, relict of an undertaker and now in the old-clothes line, who has social ambitions. (I must here say in parenthesis that _Mrs. Badger_ is a double stroke of genius on the part both of Miss JENNINGS the author and of Miss SYDNEY FAIRBROTHER. You don't know which to admire most, the things she says [Miss J.] or the way she says them [Miss S. B.]. Honours divided and high honours at that.) _Lady Tonbridge_ had advertised for a clergyman's widow to render some secretarial service, and the ambitious _Mrs. Badger_ had applied, duly weeded. Meanwhile the elderly _Lady T._ had seen her _fiance_ and with the young person in pink, and it was a brilliant and base afterthought to bribe the clergyman's widow to claim the girl as her long-missing daughter (invented). Both the young Lord and the young person, too much in love perhaps to be critical, accept the situation; but you haven't quite got _Mrs. Badger_ if you think she's the sort of person one would precisely jump at for a mother-in-law. At the supreme moment when _Mrs. B._, after an interview with the whisky bottle, forgets her part and, lapsing into the mere widow of the undertaker, gives it to the intriguing _Lady Tonbridge_ in the neck with a wealth of imagery, a command of slightly slurred invective and a range of facial expression beyond adequate description, she is perhaps less attractive in the capacity of mother-by-marriage than ever, even if the interlude prove the goodness of her heart. But it is just at that moment that the young person is recognised by her maid. The daughter of the _Duchess of Hampshire_, no less! So all is well. Not that Miss JENNINGS' plot matters. She freely accepts the absurdities which her bizarre outline demands, but doesn't shirk the pains to make her situations possible within the pleasantly impossible frame. What is all-important is that she does shake the house with genuinely explosive humour.