* * * * *

    “WAREHOUSEMAN (jun.), clothing dept., large
    corporation.”—­Advt. in “Glasgow Herald.”

He should show off the new line in check waistcoats to the best advantage.

* * * * *

THE SECRET OUT.

AN INTERVIEW.

He had a coarse confident face, a red nose, a Cockney accent and a raucous voice.  He was dressed as a sluttish woman.

Directly I saw him I was conscious of a feeling of repulsion, which I fear my expression must have indicated, for he looked surprised.

“Why aren’t you laughing?” he asked.

“Why should I laugh?” I asked in return.

“Because you are looking at me,” he said.  “I am accustomed to laughter the instant I appear.”

“Why?”

“Because I am a funny man,” he said.

“How?”

“I look funny,” he said; “I say funny things; I draw a good salary for it.  If I wasn’t funny I shouldn’t draw a good salary, should I?”

“You do draw it,” I said guardedly.  “Be funny now.”

“‘Wait till I catch you bending,’” he said with a violent grimace.  “’What ho!  ‘Ave a drop of gin, ole dear?’”

“Be funny now,” I repeated.

He looked bewildered.  “I was being funny,” he said.  “I bring the house down with that, as a rule.”

“Where?”

“In panto,” he said.

“Oh!” I replied.  “So you’re the funny man of a pantomime, are you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Which one?”

“All of them,” he said.

“Good,” I replied.  “I have long wanted a talk with you.  There are things I want to ask you.  Why, for instance, do you always pretend to be a grimy slum woman?”

“It seems to be expected,” he said.

“Who expects it?  The children?”

“What children?”

“The children who go to pantomimes,” I said.

“Oh, those!  Well, they laugh,” he replied evasively.

“They like to see you quarrelling with your husband and getting drunk?”

“They laugh,” he said.

“They like to hear you, as an Ugly Sister in Cinderella, singing ’Father’s on the booze again; mother’s off her chump’?”

“They laugh,” he said.

“They like to see you as the wife of Ali Baba, finding pawntickets in your husband’s pockets and charging him with spending his money on flappers?”

“They laugh,” he said.

“They like to see you, as The Widow Twankay, visit a race meeting and get welshed and have your clothes torn off?”

“They laugh,” he said.

“They like to see you, as Dick Whittington’s mother, telling the cat that, if he must eat onions, at any rate he can refrain from kissing her?”

“They laugh,” he said.

“They like to see you, as the dame in Goody Two Shoes, open a night club on the strict understanding that it is only for clergymen’s daughters in need of recreation?”