Read his play Slump did, and Cimmerian gloom gathered upon the countenances of his listeners as the first act dragged to a close. Slump put the typescript down on the supper-table and looked round; Gormleigh’s head had sunk upon his folded arms. Heavy snores testified to the depth and genuineness of his slumbers. The countenances of De Hanna and Candelish expressed the most profound dejection, while the intellectual half of Mrs. Gudrun’s celebrated countenance had temporarily vanished behind her upper lip.
“What do you say to that?” Slump asked, quite undismayed by these signs of weariness on the part of his listeners. Mrs. Gudrun came back to answer him.
“I say that it’s the longest funeral I’ve ever been at. Open another bottle of the Boy, Teddy, and wake up, Gormleigh.”
“I hof not been asleep,” explained Gormleigh.
“I wish I had,” sighed De Hanna. “The fact is,” he continued, prompted by a glance from Mrs. Gudrun, “that your play don’t do.”
Slump maintained, in the face of this discouragement, a smiling front.
“Won’t do, eh?”
“Won’t do for nuts,” said De Hanna firmly. “Nobody could possibly laugh at it,” he continued.
“It is too tam tismal,” put in Gormleigh.
“But if I prove to you that people can laugh at it, what then?” queried the undismayed Slump. He took from a fob pocket-book a newspaper cutting and handed it across the supper-table to De Hanna. The cutting was headed