“We thought you’d know more about it than anybody else and would advise us,” said Nancy Fazackerly prettily.
“Even Mrs. Kendal has never suggested that I could write a play, my dear.”
“But I’ve sometimes wondered whether I oughtn’t to have gone in for writing,” said Claire. “Only I haven’t had the time.”
“It’s more about the performers than the actual play that we want advice,” explained Captain Patch. “Though even that isn’t going to be all plain sailing. General Kendal—”
“Most kindly,” said Nancy Fazackerly.
“Most kindly,” Bill repeated, in a worried, obedient sort of way, “most kindly turned up last night with a pair of Hessian boots.”
“Hessian boots?”
“He thought they’d make such a good stage property and that we ought to write something that would make use of them. He really was most awfully keen, poor old fellow, and of course it isn’t a bad idea, in its way. Hessian boots, you know—you don’t see them nowadays.”
To this we assented.
“One could do something with a uniform, and the boots would give a finish, as it were,” Mrs. Fazackerly suggested.