Maud.  Miss Athene was married this morning, Topping.  We’ve just come from the Registrar’s.

Topping. [Immovably] Indeed, Miss.  I thought perhaps she was about to be.

Maud.  Oh!

Topping.  Comin’ events.  I saw the shadder yesterday.

Maud.  Well, it’s all right.  She’s coming on here with my uncle.

     A cab is heard driving up.

That’s them, I expect.  We all feel awful about father.

Topping.  Ah!  I shouldn’t be surprised if he feels awful about you,
Miss.

Maud. [At the window] It is them.

     Topping goes out into the hall; Athene and Ralph enter Right.

Maud.  Where’s father, Uncle Ralph?

Ralph.  With his solicitor.

Athene.  We left Guy with mother at the studio.  She still thinks she ought to come.  She keeps on saying she must, now father’s in a hole.

Maud.  I’ve got her things on the cab; she ought to be perfectly free to choose.

Ralph.  You’ve got freedom on the brain, Maud.

Maud.  So would you, Uncle Ralph, if you had father about.

Ralph.  I’m his partner, my dear.

Maud.  Yes; how do you manage him?

Ralph.  I’ve never yet given him in charge.

Athene.  What do you do, Uncle Ralph?

Ralph.  Undermine him when I can.

Maud.  And when you can’t?

Ralph.  Undermine the other fellow.  You can’t go to those movie people now, Maud.  They’d star you as the celebrated Maud Builder who gave her father into custody.  Come to us instead, and have perfect freedom, till all this blows over.

Maud.  Oh! what will father be like now?

Athene.  It’s so queer you and he being brothers, Uncle Ralph.

Ralph.  There are two sides to every coin, my dear.  John’s the head-and I’m the tail.  He has the sterling qualities.  Now, you girls have got to smooth him down, and make up to him.  You’ve tried him pretty high.

Maud. [Stubbornly] I never wanted him for a father, Uncle.

Ralph.  They do wonderful things nowadays with inherited trouble.  Come, are you going to be nice to him, both of you?

Athene.  We’re going to try.

Ralph.  Good!  I don’t even now understand how it happened.

Maud.  When you went out with Guy, it wasn’t three minutes before he came.  Mother had just told us about—­well, about something beastly.  Father wanted us to go, and we agreed to go out for five minutes while he talked to mother.  We went, and when we came back he told me to get a cab to take mother home.  Poor mother stood there looking like a ghost, and he began hunting and hauling her towards the door.  I saw red, and instead of a cab I fetched that policeman.  Of course father did black his eye.  Guy was splendid.