Bradley.  I don’t care anything about it, but I’m sure I don’t know what else to do.  If I am to play Fenderson—­

Barlow (in amazement).  You?

Yardsley (aghast).  Fenderson?  By all that is lovely, what part have you learned?

Bradley.  The one you told me to learn in your message—­Featherhead, of course.

Barlow.  But that’s my part!

Mrs. Perkins.  Of course it is, Mr. Bradley.  Mr. Barlow is to be—­

Mrs. Bradley.  But that’s what Edward was told.  I saw the message myself.

Yardsley (sinking into a chair dejectedly).  Why, Ed Bradley!  I never mentioned Featherhead.  You were to be Muddleton!

Bradley.  Me?

Mrs. Bradley.  What?

Yardsley.  Certainly.  There’s nothing the matter with Barlow, and he’s cast for Featherhead.  You’ve learned the wrong part!

Bradley (searching his pockets).  Here’s the telegram.  There (takes message from pocket), read that.  There are my instructions.

Yardsley (grasps telegram and reads it.  Drops it to floor).  Well, I’ll be jiggered!

[Buries his face in his hands.

Mrs. Perkins (picking up message and reading aloud).  “Can you take
Fenderson’s part in to-night’s show?  Answer at once.  Yardsley.”

Barlow.  Well, that’s a nice mess.  You must have paresis, Bob.

Perkins.  I was afraid he’d get it sooner or later.  You need exercise, Yardsley.  Go pull that curtain up and down a half-dozen times and it’ll do you good.

Bradley.  That telegram lets me out.

Mrs. Bradley.  I should say so.

Perkins.  Lets us all out, seems to me.

Yardsley.  But—­I wrote Henderson, not Fenderson.  That jackass of a telegraph operator is responsible for it all.  “Will you take Henderson’s part?” is what I wrote, and he’s gone and got it Fenderson.  Confound his—­

Mrs. Perkins.  But what are we going to do?  It’s quarter-past six now, and the curtain is to rise at 8.30.

Perkins.  I’ll give ’em my unequalled imitation of Sandow lifting the curtain with one hand.  Thus. [Raises curtain wish right hand.

Yardsley.  For goodness’ sake, man, be serious.  There are seventy-five people coming here to see this performance, and they’ve paid for their tickets.

Mrs. Perkins.  It’s perfectly awful.  We can’t do it at all unless Mr. Bradley will go right up stairs now and learn—­

Mrs. Bradley.  Oh, that’s impossible.  He’s learned nearly three hundred lines to-day already.  Mr. Barlow might—­

Barlow.  I couldn’t think of it, Mrs. Bradley.  I’ve got as much as I can do remembering what lines I have learned.

Perkins.  It would take you a week to forget your old part completely enough to do the other well.  You’d be playing both parts, the way Irving does when he’s irritated, before you knew it.