HILDEGARDE (calmly and teasingly).  Mr. Tranto, we are forgetting one thing.

TRANTO.  What’s that?

HILDEGARDE.  You’re an editor, and I’m a contributor whom you’ve never met.

Enter Mrs. Culver (L).

MRS. CULVER.  Mr. Tranto, how are you? (Shaking hands.) I’m delighted to see you.  So sorry I didn’t warn you we dine half an hour later—­thanks to the scandalous way the Government slave-drives my poor husband.  Please do excuse me. (She sits).

TRANTO.  On the contrary, it’s I who should ask to be excused—­proposing myself like this at the last moment.

MRS. CULVER.  It was very nice of you to think of us.  Come and sit down here. (Indicating a place by her side on the sofa.) Now in my poor addled brain I had an idea you were engaged for to-night at your aunt’s, Lady Blackfriars’.

TRANTO (sitting).  Mrs. Culver, you forget nothing.  I was engaged for Auntie Joe’s, but she’s ill and she’s put me off.

MRS. CULVER.  Dear me!  How very sudden!

TRANTO.  Sudden?

MRS. CULVER.  I met Lady Blackfriars at tea late this afternoon and it struck me how well she was looking.

TRANTO.  Yes, she always looks particularly well just before she’s going to be ill.  She’s very brave, very brave.

MRS. CULVER.  D’you mean in having twins?  It was more than brave of her; it was beautiful—­both boys, too.

HILDEGARDE (innocently).  Budgeting for a long war.

MRS. CULVER (affectionately).  My dear girl!  Come here, darling, you haven’t changed.  Excuse me, Mr. Tranto.

HILDEGARDE (approaching).  I’ve been so busy.  And I thought nobody was coming.

MRS. CULVER.  Is your father nobody? (stroking and patting Hildegarde’s dress into order).  What have you been so busy on?

HILDEGARDE.  Article for The Echo. (Tranto, who has been holding the MS., indicates it.)

MRS. CULVER.  I do wish you would let me see those cookery articles of yours before they’re printed.

TRANTO (putting MS. in his pocket).  I’m afraid that’s quite against the rules.  You see, in Fleet Street—­

MRS. CULVER (very pleasantly).  As you please.  I don’t pretend to be intellectual.  But I confess I’m just a wee bit disappointed in Hildegarde’s cookery articles.  I’m a great believer in good cookery.  I put it next to the Christian religion—­and far in front of mere cleanliness.  I’ve just been trying to read Professor Metchnikoff’s wonderful book on ‘The Nature of Man.’  It only confirms me in my lifelong belief that until the nature of man is completely altered good cooking is the chief thing that women ought to understand.  Now I taught Hildegarde some cookery myself.  She was not what I should call a brilliant pupil, but she did grasp the great eternal principles.  And yet I find her writing (with charm and benevolence) stuff like her last article—­’The Everlasting Boiled Potato,’ I think she called it.  Hildegarde, it was really very naughty of you to say what you said in that article. (Drawing down Hildegarde’s head and kissing her.)