"Oh! Ah! So you keep a foundling hospital, too?"
"Only one!" explained Marjorie. "She's a dear," she added warmly. "She's on the stage. She was badly in debt before the new piece started—they don't get paid during rehearsals, you see—and she is only just beginning to get on her feet again; so I can't afford to work for nothing during the day just now, unless—"
"Unless you go on the stage yourself at night? Is that it, O Capable de tout?"
"I was thinking of it," confessed Marjorie; "but I don't know how you guessed."
"It's the first thing every pretty girl thinks of when confronted with the necessity of earning a living. Go on."
"And I want to ask you: Is it playing the game to be on the stage at all in war time? I mean, ought the men to be encouraged to go to revues, and things like that, when they are on leave? Is it all wrong, and demoralising, and unpatriotic, as some people say?"
Lord Eskerley sat up, and took off his spectacles.
"Unpatriotic fiddlesticks!" he remarked with great vigour. "In war time there are just three things that matter. The first is morale. I have forgotten the other two. The maintenance of purely military morale can safely be left in military hands; but civilian morale—and that includes the morale of the men on leave of course, rests mainly on the triple foundation of the Church, the Press, and the Stage; and, as things are to-day, I am not sure that the Stage doesn't have the biggest say in the whole business. (Don't tell Doctor Chirnside I said that, will you?) So you are thinking of joining your foundling behind the footlights. Chorus, I presume?"
"Yes. They would give me three pounds a week."
"They would get you cheap! And you want me to satisfy your conscience that the life of a galley-slave in a vitiated atmosphere all day, followed by vocal and calisthenic exercises in an even more vitiated atmosphere for three hours every night, is a sufficiently close approach to hard work to exonerate you from all suspicion of lukewarmness with regard to the war?" The old man stood up and shook hands. "Donna Quixota Habakkuk, the certificate is granted! I suppose you will stay on for a week or two, until I find a successor—I won't say a substitute? Don't forget me, altogether. Come and see me sometimes. I am less busy, and more solitary, than you suppose. You know when to come: you are familiar with my goings out and comings in. And—good luck, my dear!"