Mr. Edwards. “But—but the button isn’t sewed on. I can’t go out in this.”
Mrs. Edwards. “I knew it, Robert. I sewed the button on the wrong coat.”
Billis and Robert fall in a faint. Mrs. Billis rises and smiles, grasping Mrs. Edwards’s hand fervently.
Mrs. Billis. “Noble woman!”
Mrs. Edwards. “Yes; I’ve saved the farce.”
Mrs. Billis. “You have. For, in spite of these—these strikers—these theatric Debses, you—you got in the point! The button was sewed on the wrong overcoat!”
Curtain.
“When the farce was finished,” said Mr. Parke, “and the applause which greeted the fall of the curtain had subsided, I dreamed also the following author’s note: ‘The elapses’ in this farce may seem rather long, but the reader must remember that it is the author’s intention that his farce, if acted, should last throughout a whole evening. If it were not for the elapses the acting time would be scarcely longer than twenty minutes, instead of two hours and a half.”
“I mention this,” Mr. Parke added, “not only in justification of myself, but also as a possible explanation of certain shortcomings in the work of the original master. Sometimes the action may seem to drag a trifle, but that is not the fault of the author, but of life itself. To be real one must be true, and truth is not to be governed by him who holds the pen.”