Part 4 (1/2)

_Mary._ ”Please, Mrs. Edwards, the butcher is came, and he says they have some very fine perairie-chickens to-day.”

_Mrs. Robert Edwards._ ”We don't want any prairie-chickens. The prairies are so very vulgar. Tell him never to suggest such a thing again. Have we any potatoes in the house?”

_Mary._ ”There's three left, ma'am, and two slices of cold roast beef.”

_Mrs. Robert Edwards._ ”Then tell him to bring five more potatoes, a steak, and--Was all the pickled salmon eaten?”

_Mary._ ”All but the can, ma'am.”

_Mrs. Robert Edwards._ ”Well--Mr. Edwards is very fond of fish.

Tell him to bring two boxes of sardines and a bottle of anchovy paste.”

_Mary._ ”Very well, Mrs. Edwards.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARY]

_Mrs. Robert Edwards._ ”And--ah--Mary, tell him to bring some Brussels sprouts for breakfast. What are you doing with that Worcester vase?”

_Mary._ ”I was takin' it to cook, ma'am. Sure she broke the bean-pot this mornin', and she wanted somethin' to cook the beans in.”

_Mrs. Robert Edwards._ ”Oh, I see. Well, take good care of it, Mary.

It's a rare piece. In fact, I think you'd better leave that here and remove the rubber plant from the jardiniere, and let Nora cook the beans in that. Times are a little too hard to cook beans in Royal Worcester.”

_Mary._ ”Very well, ma'am.” Mary goes out through the door. Mrs. Edwards resumes her sewing. Fifteen minutes elapse, interrupted only by the ticking of the alarm-clock and the occasional ringing of the bell on pa.s.sing trolley-cars. ”If it does rain,” Mrs. Edwards says at last, with an anxious glance through the window, ”I suppose Robert won't care about going to see the pantomime to-night. It will be too bad if we don't go, for this is the last night of the season, and I've been very anxious to renew my acquaintance with 'Humpty Dumpty.' It is so very dramatic, and I do so like dramatic things. Even when they happen in my own life I like dramatic things. I'll never forget how I enjoyed the thrill that came over me, even in my terror, that night last winter when the trolley-car broke down in front of this house; and last summer, too, when the oar-lock broke in our row-boat thirty-three feet from sh.o.r.e; that was a situation that I enjoyed in spite of its peril. How people can say that life is humdrum, I can't see. Exciting things, real third-act situations, climaxes I might even call them, are always happening in my life, and yet some novelists pretend that life is humdrum just to excuse their books for being humdrum. I'd just like to show these apostles of realism the diary I could have kept if I had wanted to. Beginning with the fall my brother George had from the hay-wagon, back in 1876, running down through my first meeting with Robert, which was romantic enough--he paid my car-fare in from Brookline the day I lost my pocket-book--even to yesterday, when an entire stranger called me up on the telephone, my life has fairly bubbled with dramatic situations that would take the humdrum theory and utterly annihilate it.” As Mrs. Edwards is speaking she is also sewing the b.u.t.ton already alluded to on Mr. Edwards's coat as described. ”There,”

taking the last st.i.tch in the coat, ”that's done, and now I can go and get ready for luncheon.” She folds up the coat, glances at the clock, and goes out. A half-hour elapses. The silence is broken only by occasional noises from the street, the rattling of the wheels of a herdic over the pavement, the voices of newsboys, and an occasional strawberry-vender's cry. At the end of the half-hour the alarm-clock goes off and the curtain falls.

SCENE SECOND

_Time_: EVENING AT BOSTON

The scene is laid in the drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Edwards.

Mrs. Edwards is discovered reading _Pendennis_, and seems in imminent danger of going to sleep over it. Mr. Edwards is stretched out upon the sofa, quite asleep, with _Ivanhoe_ lying open upon his chest.

Twenty-five minutes elapse, when the door-bell rings.

_Mr. Edwards_ (_drowsily_). ”Let me off at the next corner, conductor.”

_Mrs. Edwards._ ”Why, Robert--what nonsense you are talking!”

_Mr. Edwards_ (_rubbing his eyes and sitting up_). ”Eh? What? Nonsense?

I talk nonsense? Really, my dear, that is a serious charge to bring against one of the leading characters in a magazine farce. Wit, perhaps, I may indulge in, but nonsense, never!”

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWARDS REBELS]

_Mrs. Edwards._ ”That is precisely what I complain about. The idea of a well-established personage like yourself lying off on a sofa in his own apartment and asking a conductor to let him off at the next corner!

It's--”

_Mr. Edwards._ ”I didn't do anything of the sort.”