There are always observant people to note these things and to retail them in conversation.
Of course the play was a great success. Amateur theatricals always are a great success. Sallie’s performance was quite brilliant and the others were good enough.
The chief success of the evening was achieved by Alfred, who overacted his part, uttered impromptu soliloquies, cut into other people’s speeches and played the clown in dumb show throughout a pathetic duet between Sallie and Martyn.
The audience, as a whole, adored him. He was applauded at every impossible moment, and the servants, at the back of the hall, screamed with laughter whenever he spoke. Mumma was beaming.
“I must say, Ahlfred has a great sense of the ridiculous,” she said appreciatively. “I hope we all have, it’s such a help, to see the funny side—but Ahlfred especially, from the time he was quite a little fellow, has always been able to keep us in a perfect roar.”
Finally the performers all sang “The Bulbul Ameer,” and Bill and Nancy took a call for “Author,” and then everybody said to everybody else how good it had all been, and the actors came off the stage still in costume and received compliments and congratulations.
A blaring atrocity, known as a “sensational fox-trot,” opened the dance. Claire had engaged a jazz band, and at intervals, to a sound of clattering fire-irons, they suddenly yelled in brassy staccato:
“Why—did—I kiss—that girl—
Why, oh! why, oh! why?”
It was ugly, discordant, essentially vulgar, and when all that was admitted it had its value. It was entrainant.