emotional actress the English-speaking peoples had ever had, but who unfortunately had not been sufficiently seen of late on the London stage, and that this would be her first appearance after her recent artistic successes in the United States.  And lastly that Mr. Marrier (whose name would be remembered in connection with ... etc., etc.) was Mr. E.H.  Machin’s acting manager and technical adviser.  Edward Henry could trace the hand of Marrier in all the paragraphs.  Marrier had lost no time.

Mrs. Machin, senior, came into the drawing-room just as he was adjusting the “Tannhaeuser” overture to the mechanician.  The piece was one of his major favourites.

“This is no place for you, my lad,” said Mrs. Machin, grimly, glancing round the room.  “But I came to tell ye as th’ mutton’s been cooling at least five minutes.  You gave out as you were hungry.”

“Keep your hair on, mother,” said he, springing up.

Barely twelve hours earlier he had been mincing among the elect and the select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic; among the lah-di-dah and Kensingtonian accents; among rouged lips and blue hose and fixed simperings; in the centre of the universe.  And he had conducted himself with considerable skill accordingly.  Nobody, on the previous night, could have guessed from the cut of his fancy waistcoat or the judiciousness of his responses to remarks about verse, that his wife often wore a white apron, or that his mother was—­the woman she was!  He had not unskilfully caught many of the tricks of that metropolitan environment.  But now they all fell away from him, and he was just Edward Henry—­nay, he was almost the old Denry again.

“Who chose this mutton?” he asked as he bent over the juicy and rich joint and cut therefrom exquisite thick slices with a carving-knife like a razor.

“I did, if ye want to know,” said his mother.  “Anything amiss with it?” she challenged.

“No.  It’s fine.”

“Yes,” said she.  “I’m wondering whether you get aught as good as that in those grand hotels as you call ’em.”

“We don’t,” said Edward Henry.  First, it was true; and secondly, he was anxious to be propitiatory, for he had a plan to further.

He looked at his wife.  She was not talkative, but she had received him in the hall with every detail of affection, if a little absent-mindedly owing to the state of the house.  She had not been caustic, like his mother, about this male incursion into spring-cleaning.  She had not informed the surrounding air that she failed to understand why them as were in London couldn’t stop in London for a bit, as his mother had.  Moreover, though the spring-cleaning fully entitled her to wear a white apron at meals, she was not wearing a white apron:  which was a sign to him that she still loved him enough to want to please him.  On the whole he was fairly optimistic about his plan of salvation.  Nevertheless, it was not until nearly the end of the meal—­when one of his mother’s apple-pies was being consumed—­that he began to try to broach it.