“Don’t worry,” said Bruce. “If there were no sinners the saints wouldn’t know how good they are!” “We’d better quit on that,” said Helen. “It’s time to go!” II At the hall where the Dramatic Club’s entertainments were given they met Shepherd Mills, who confessed that he had been holding four seats in the hope that they’d have pity on him and not let him sit alone. “I’ve hardly seen Connie for a week,” he said. “This thing of having a wife on the stage is certainly hard on the husband!” The room was filled to capacity and there were many out of town guests, whom Shep named proudly as though their presence were attributable to the fact that Connie was on the program. Whitford, in his ample leisure, had been putting new spirit into the club, and the first two of the one-act plays that constituted the bill disclosed new talent and were given with precision and finish. Chief interest, however, lay in the third item of the bill, a short poetic drama written by Whitford himself. The scene, revealed as the curtain rose, was of Whitford’s own designing--the battlements of a feudal castle, with a tower rising against a sweep of blue sky. The set transcended anything that the club had seen in its long history and was greeted with a quick outburst of applause. Whitford’s name passed over the room, it seemed, in a single admiring whisper. George was a genius; the town had never possessed anyone comparable to George Whitford, who distinguished himself alike in war and in the arts of peace and could afford to spend money with a free hand on amateur theatricals. His piece, “The Beggar,” written in blank verse, was dated vaguely in the Middle Ages and the device was one of the oldest known to romance. A lord of high degree is experiencing the time-honored difficulty in persuading his daughter of the desirability of marriage with a noble young knight whose suit she has steadfastly scorned. The castle is threatened; the knight’s assistance is imperatively needed; and the arrival of messengers, the anxious concern of the servitors, induce at once an air of tensity. In the fading afternoon light Constance Mills, as the princess, who has been wandering in the gardens, makes her entrance unconcernedly and greets her distracted lover with light-hearted indifference. She begins recounting a meeting with a beggar minstrel who has beguiled her with his music. She provokingly insists upon singing snatches of his songs to the irritated knight, who grows increasingly uneasy over the danger to the beleagured castle. As the princess exits the beggar appears and engages the knight in a colloquy, witty and good-humored on the vagrant’s part, but marked by the knight’s mounting anger. Whitford, handsome, jaunty, assured, even in his rags, with his shrewd retorts evokes continuous laughter.