Mr. Stoach (capitally played by Mr. J. Valentine—but everybody plays capitally in this piece) finds Lord Clivebrooke (Mr. Charles Wyndham—admirable also) between midnight and one in the morning alone with charming Jessie Keber (Miss Mary Moore,—delightful!) in old Matthew Keber's toy-shop, Keber himself (another very clever impersonation by Mr. W. H. Day) having gone out on the sly to get drunk on money supplied him by the aforesaid unscrupulous Stoach, M.P. So what would have to be said in the House should amount to this:—
Stoach. What! the Leader of the House bring in this Purity Bill!! Why I saw him myself with my own eyes in a toy-shop, all among the toys, alone at one in the morning with an attractive young person of the female persuasion.
"Look at that now," says an Irish M.P., following the example of Shaun the Post in The Colleen Bawn, when the scoundrelly lawyer brings a charge against the hero of the drama, "An' what might you be doin' about there at that same time?"
Supposing, for an instant, the impossible, Stoach would be called to order, and be severely reprimanded by the Speaker.
Had the much-heckled and long-suffering Clivebrooke been gifted by the Author with lively ready-wit, he would have replied to his father and supporters, who invade his room, in the pleasantest and Charliest-Wyndhamest manner, "Yes (lightly and airily). What could I be doing in a toy-shop with a young lady? Why (still more lightly and airily) of course I was 'toying with her!'" Whereupon his old father would have been immensely tickled, and the deputation, in fits of laughter, would have rushed back to the lobby to report "the last good thing said by that clever chap Clivebrooke! So like him!"
This Act would have ended with the triumph of ready-wit over disappointed malignity. Jessie Keber would have run in and embraced her hero, the Bill would have been carried (Cheers heard without), and all would have ended happily and pleasantly without any necessity having arisen for another Act, either of Parliament or of the piece.
"Yes," says this dramatist, "I admit the soft impeachment. I plead guilty, with extenuating circumstances. The play's the thing; and if the facts don't suit my play, so much the worse for the facts. Success has been achieved, and what more can any living author want? Credit and cash. Voilà tout! 'Credit' for my own original invention in hitting upon the Parliamentary accessories to my picture; and 'cash,' which will be paid as long as the public take an interest in the play, and just so long shall I take my interest out of the public money."
To sum up in the words of the old-fashioned tag, "If our friends in front are pleased, then Manager and Author are satisfied." But, if objection be still taken to the unreality of the Parliamentary setting of the picture, then "please remember," apologises 'Enry Hauthor, "that 'it's only my play.'"