sir, we had better drop it."

Mr Wegg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous air,
and not only that, but by dint of repeating with a manly delicacy,
"In Mrs Boffin's presence, sir, we had better drop it!" turned the
disadvantage on Boffin, who felt that he had committed himself in a very
painful manner.

I am willing to let Mr Wegg drop it on these terms, provided I am
allowed to mention here that Mrs Warren's Profession is a play for
women; that it was written for women; that it has been performed and
produced mainly through the determination of women that it should be
performed and produced; that the enthusiasm of women made its first
performance excitingly successful; and that not one of these women had
any inducement to support it except their belief in the timeliness and
the power of the lesson the play teaches. Those who were "surprised to
see ladies present" were men; and when they proceeded to explain that
the journals they represented could not possibly demoralize the public
by describing such a play, their editors cruelly devoted the space saved
by their delicacy to an elaborate and respectful account of the progress
of a young lord's attempt to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A few days
sooner Mrs Warren would have been crowded out of their papers by an
exceptionally abominable police case. I do not suggest that the police
case should have been suppressed; but neither do I believe that regard
for public morality had anything to do with their failure to grapple
with the performance by the Stage Society. And, after all, there was no
need to fall back on Silas Wegg's subterfuge. Several critics saved the
faces of their papers easily enough by the simple expedient of saying
all they had to say in the tone of a shocked governess lecturing a
naughty child. To them I might plead, in Mrs Warren's words, "Well,