To remove anxiety on the subject, it may be stated at once that the first night of “Squibs” was neither a failure nor a triumphant success. It was enjoyable, for those who enjoyed the sort of thing--(fantastic wit, clever dialogue, much talk, little action, and less emotion)--and dull for those who didn’t. It would certainly never be popular, and probably the author would have been shocked and grieved if it had been. The critics approved it as clever, and said it was rather lengthy and highly improbable. Jane, Sally, Arnold, Billy Raymond, and Eddy enjoyed it extremely. So did Eileen Le Moine and her companion Bridget Hogan, who watched it from a box. Cecil Le Moine wandered in and out of the box, looking plaintive. He told Eileen that they were doing it even worse than he had feared. He was rather an engaging-looking person, with a boyish, young-Napoleonic beauty of face and a velvet smoking-jacket, and a sweet, plaintive voice, and the air of an injured child about him. A child of genius, perhaps; anyhow a gifted child, and a lovable one, and at the same time as selfish as even a child can be. Eileen Le Moine and Miss Hogan came to speak to their friends in the pit before taking their seats. Eddy was introduced to them, and they talked for a minute or two. When they had gone, Sally said to him, “Isn’t Eileen attractive?” “Very,” he said. “And Bridget’s a dear,” added Sally, childishly boasting of her friends. “I can imagine she would be,” said Eddy. Miss Hogan had amused him during their short interview. She was older than the rest of them; she was perhaps thirty-four, and very well dressed, and with a shrewd, woman-of-the-world air that the others quite lacked, and dangling pince-nez, and ironic eyes, and a slight stutter. Eddy regretted that she was not sitting among them; her caustic comments would have added salt to the evening. “Bridget’s worldly, you know,” Sally said. “She’s the only one of us with money, and she goes out a lot. You see how smartly she’s dressed. She’s the only person I’m really friends with who’s like that. She’s awfully clever, too, though she doesn’t do anything.” “Doesn’t she do anything?” Eddy asked sceptically, and Arnold answered him. “Our Bridget? Sally only means she’s a lily of the field. She writes not, neither does she paint. She only mothers those who do, and hauls them out of scrapes. Eileen lives with her, you know, in a flat in Kensington. She tries to look after Eileen. Quite enough of a job, besides tending all the other ingenuous young persons of both sexes she has under her wing.”