Emily. Yes. I'm quite relieved. I expected something majestic and terrible, something like a battleship. I did, truly. Now what am I to call you? Sir C. What you used to call me. Francis. No, you always called him Tarlie. Emily. I'm sure I never did. Every one used to say that I talked just like a little woman. The fact is, I was born at the wrong end, and I'm getting more childish every day. I say, Charlie, I do wish I'd known a little earlier that you weren't a battleship. I'd worked myself up into a fine state of nervousness. Sir C. You don't seem nervous. was. Emily. How nice it is of you to see me like this! Now, there was another illusion. I always thought you were most frightfully difficult to see. Sir C. Not to any one from the Five Towns, and especially from Bursley. Francis. Don't you believe it! I assure you that I only got at him this afternoon over the dead bodies of a soldier and five office-boys. Emily [to Francis]. Yes, I guessed it was you who had made straight the pathway. [To Sir C.] Francis and I XLIV. 2336 LIVING AGE. VOL. got rather intimate yesterday-didn't we, Francis?-over the Yeats play. Francis. Very! Very! But the butter-scotch helped, you know. Emily. I never asked you how you thought I said my lines, and you never told me. Francis. Oh, well. I daresay you've seen what Macquoid said of the first performance. He said you were as heaven made you! . . . So you must have been very fine. Emily. How horrid he is! He really is horrid! . . I suppose I oughtn't to say that to you, Charlie, as he's on one of your papers now. Of course I know he's generally right. what makes it so annoying. That's Sir C. Say anything you choose. He's no longer on our staff. Emily. You've dismissed him? Sir C. It comes to that. Emily. Oh! Rejoicing in Zion! Ꭺ sigh of relief will run through the whole profession. And who's going to take his place? Francis. Me, madam. Emily. Well, it's just like a fairytale. But I wonder if our young and untried friendship will stand the awful strain. Francis. I've decided what I shall do in regard to you. If I can't honestly praise you, I sha'n't mention you at all. Emily. Charlie, let me beg you to dispense with his services at once. He'll be more disliked even than Macquoid. [To Francis.] Do you know what we're going to produce next-if we can keep open? Ford's "Broken Heart." Francis [recites]. "Crowns may flourish and decay; Beauties shine, but fade away; Youth may revel, yet it must Lie down in a bed of dust." Emily. Yes, isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's a lovely play, Charlie. Sir C. Never read it. Ford, did you say? Don't know him. You see, I'm so taken up Emily [sympathetically]. I know how busy you must be. But if you could find time to read "The Broken Heart," I'm sure you'd enjoy it. Has Francis told you what I've come about? Francis. I was just beginning to explain when you arrived and interrupted me. Emily. How clumsy of me! [composing her features]. Well, it's like this, Charlie [laughs]. Sir C. What's the joke? Emily. Nothing. Only nervousness! Mere hysterics! I was just thinking how absurd I have been to come here and worry you. Francis, do explain. Francis [to Sir Charles]. The creature is after money. Emily [with a cry of protest]. You appalling and unprincipled bungler! [To Charlie.] It's like this. Our chief is a very great man. Sir C. St. John-is it? [Turns to Francis as if for confirmation.] He Emily. Yes. We aways call him the Chief. He's a most fearful brute. stamps on us and curses us, and pays us miserably, miserably, and we all adore him, and nobody knows why. He simply cares about nothing but his theatre; and of course for producing a play, there's only him. But as a man of business-well, it would be no use trying to describe what he is as a man of business; an infant in arms could give him lessons in business through the post. Now only a fortnight ago, when the Chancellor of Oxford University made that appeal for funds, what do you think the Chief did? He sent twenty pounds, just because he rowed once in the Boat-race. And he simply hadn't got twenty pounds. Sir C. Clever chap! Emily. Wasn't it splendid of him? The Prince's might be a success if somebody with money would come in and look after the business side, and never let the Chief see a cheque-book. Sir C. Isn't it a success? I thought I saw an advertisement in the "Mercury" to-day that the new matinées were very successful. Emily. Artistically, yes. Artistically, they're a record. But the fact has escaped the public. We are not at the moment what you'd call turning money away. Most of the notices were very bad-of course. Sir C. Were they? Was the "Mercury" bad? I forget. Emily. No, I fancy it was rather nice. Sir C. They say a good notice in the "Mercury" will keep any theatre open for at least a month. Emily. Personally, I love the "Mercury." It's so exciting. Like bread and jam, without the bread. To me it's a sort of delicious children's paper Francis [throwing his head back]. There you are again, Charles. Emily [half laughing]. I don't know what you're laughing at. I meant that for a compliment, Charlie. [Sir Charles nods good-humoredly.] Its domestic hints are splendid. But somehow the people who would be likely to come to the Prince's don't seem to read the "Mercury”—at any rate not for its dramatic criticism. The Prince's is a very special theatre, you see. Sir C. Superior you mean? Intellectual? Emily [half mocking]. Oh, yes! It's almost like a church. Sir C. And this Chief of yours wants some one to put money into this church? Emily. Yes. We're all of us trying to find capital, except him. You see, it's our livelihood. If the theatre were to close, where should I be, for instance? [Laughs.] I just happened to think of you, Charlie. The idea ran through my mind-like a mouse. Sir C. How much would be needed? Emily. Oh! I don't know. A thousand. Francis. You mean five thousand. Emily. Didn't I say five? I quite meant to. But my lips went wrong all by themselves. Sir C. [shortly]. Oh! [A pause.] Emily. Of course. Now that I'm here I can see how absurd it is. I said the Prince's might be a success-I mean financially-but honestly I don't believe it ever would. It's too good. And the Chief is too much of a genius. . . . Oh! whenever I think of him sending twenty pounds to Oxford like that, I wonder why millionaires can't attend to those great lumbering University things, instead of men like St. John. The thought of that twenty pounds always makes me perfectly furious. But the Chief's incurable. Sir C. Well, I don't mind putting five thousand into the thing. Emily. I never heard of such goings-on. I hadn't the slightest idea it was so easy as that to get five thousand pounds. Sir C. It isn't, usually. But this is a special case. I should like to help along a really superior-er-intellectual Emily [heartily]. It is an honor, isn't it, after all? But people with money never seem to see that. . . . [Pinches herself.] Yes, I'm awake. Can I go and tell the Chief, now, from you, that you're ready to Sir C. You can telephone to him this instant, if you like [pointing to telephone]. Emily. No, that won't do. Sir C. Why not? Emily. They cut off the theatre telephone this morning [a brief sobbing catch in her voice]. St. John would have had to close on Saturday if something hadn't turned up. I-I don't know what I should have done. I've been at the end of my tether once before. [Francis rises, alarmed by her symptoms.] I'm all right. I'm all right. [Laughs.] Sir C. Shall I order up some tea? Emily. No, no. I must go and tell him. I'm quite all right. I was only thinking how awkward it is to alter one's old frocks to this high-waisted Directoire style. Sir C. [lamely]. Why? GARDENS WITHOUT FLOWERS. I have come to the conclusion that Go the noble stone pines in the Borghese at Rome. The sad and reticent cypress in the Boboli Gardens at Florence round about the fountains-what depth and dignity of background; a place to wander in and be free. After all, the suitability of things is what is admirable. Are they "in value," as artists say? The relation of tones correct? They do not swear? A woman suitably dressed, a man properly mounted, a picture well framed. People talk of color; "I like a bit of color in this cold and gloomy climate" they say. Agreed; but what is color and where? Titian was a colorist, but always low in tone. Put a yellow viola beside the brightest tints of Titian and you will see. Keep your effects subdued. Never mix reds or pinks and yellow; put yellow and orange and green and white together; put blues and mauves and grays together; and let your backgrounds be broad, neutral, plain. If you have an herbaceous border against a wall, let the creepers on that wall be without flowers or nearly SO. Let the wall be the background to frame it. You would not hang a Tintoretto on a Gobelin tapestried wall. Have you ever been to Penshurst? There again is the beauty of a garden without flowers. It may have been accident; it may have been the time of year that made me like it so. There is an orchard and yew hedges and Irish yews and grass paths. And there is a tank with lovely pink brick edges and sides and water lilies and fish, and it is surrounded by a yew hedge and grass paths, and its four corners have steps down to the wall, and a ball on each pedestal at its base. And the apple blossom peeps over the hedge; and the raw sienna of the lichen everywhere on the stone gives the richness of gold; and that's all there is in the color scheme. The only flowers I noticed were patches, unrestrained and unplanned, of auriculas, evidently from seed-all colors: many fringed with margins of gold like the eyes of "la fille aux yeux d'or" in Balzac's novel. All else was richness, depth, and calm, abstract but clearly felt. Against this of course there is the garden of the Manor House, the wealth and luxuriance that is the result of the soil that suits and the flowers that dwell so happily against the gray old walls. There you can scarce go wrong -campanulas, foxgloves, endless lists of things. Flagged courtyards, flagged paths, sundials-you know it all. And if you can find a place with a moat, a clump of yews and a kingfisher, stay there if you can. Never have flowers against a balustrade, only grass or gravel. Begonias, geraniums, calceolarias are hard to manage anywhere. Annuals are delightful, but their reign is short. Try nemophila called discoidalis dull The Saturday Review. rather in color as they say and like auriculas more or less. Linaria too you know-a very useful purple-it goes well with gypsophila. You must have noticed that many flowers most beautiful cut are impossible grown in beds. Carnations, for instance, roses, and sweet peas. You take your lady down to dinner. She is fond of flowers. She knows what she likes, and she admires the decorations. They are certain to be either sweet peas and gypsophila or smilax and malmaisons. You try to make way amongst the smilax for her knickknacks-her fan, her gloves, her scent, her powder puff, her matches and cigarettes. Eventually she puts half of them on her lap, and you have to get them from the floor after dinnerwhich you hate and she is more amused at your annoyance than grateful for your trouble. Such is her sense of humor and her manners. Fruit is the proper decoration for a dinner table, not flowers. I am sure the Greeks only had fruit. Orchardson in that picture of "The Young Duke," I think it is, has fruit only in the wonderfully painted accessories of the dinner-table. The Dukes are all alike, but the fruit and plate are not. But all fruit is not beautiful. Oranges and bananas for instance are not. Grapes, apples, pears and pineapples are. What is more beautiful than black grapes with the bloom on them in a silver or gold dish? THE GASTRONOMIC YEAR. The procession of the months is always a pleasant thing to watch. It is the great interest in life to many quiet folk in country places. They note in their diaries the green spears of the snowdrops piercing the garden, the rooks beginning to build, the swallows gathering on still, sunny mornings for their autumn flight. The Colonel looks up these entries and reads them to his wife. In towns one can tell what time of year it is by a glance at the |