them out, and cornered the entire stock. It was like finding
a whelk-stall in a desert, as she afterwards partially
expressed herself. When the liqueurs began to take effect,
she started to give them imitations of farmyard animals as
they know them in Bermondsey. She began with a dancing bear,
and you know Agatha doesn't approve of dancing, except at
Buckingham Palace under proper supervision. And then she got
up on the piano and gave them an organ monkey; I gather she
went in for realism rather than a Maeterlinckian treatment of
the subject Finally, she fell into the piano and said she was
a parrot in a cage, and for an impromptu performance I
believe she was very word--perfect; no one had heard anything
like it, except Baroness Boobelstein who has attended
sittings of the Austrian Reichsrath. Agatha is trying the
Rest-cure at Buxton."

"But the tragedy?"

"Oh, the Mudge-Jervises. Well, they were getting along quite
happily, and their married life was one continuous exchange
of picture-postcards; and then one day they were thrown
together on some neutral ground where foursomes and
washerwomen overlapped, and discovered that they were
hopelessly divided on the Fiscal Question. They have thought
it best to separate, and she is to have the custody of the
Persian kittens for nine months in the year--they go back to
him for the winter, when she is abroad. There you have the
material for a tragedy drawn straight from life--and the
piece could be called 'The Price They Paid for Empire.' And
of course one would have to work in studies of the struggle