[Mr. Venables gives his hostess a reproachful look.]

Venables.  Eh—­ah—­Shand will prefer to do that himself.  I promised the gardener—­I must not disappoint him—­excuse me—­

Comtesse.  You must tell her, Charles.

Maggie.  Please, Mr. Venables, I should like to know.

[He sits down with a sigh and obeys.]

Venables.  Your husband has been writing the speech here, and by his own wish he read it to me three days ago.  The occasion is to be an important one; and, well, there are a dozen young men in the party at present, all capable of filling a certain small ministerial post. [He looks longingly at the mower, but it sends no message to his aid.] And as he is one of them I was anxious that he should show in this speech of what he is capable.

Maggie.  And hasn’t he?

[Not for the first time Mr. Venables wishes that he was not in politics.]

Venables.  I am afraid he has.

Comtesse.  What is wrong with the speech, Charles?

Venables.  Nothing—­and he can still deliver it.  It is a powerful, well-thought-out piece of work, such as only a very able man could produce.  But it has no special quality of its own—­none of the little touches that used to make an old stager like myself want to pat Shand on the shoulder. [The COMTESSE’s mouth twitches, but Maggie declines to notice it.] He pounds on manfully enough, but, if I may say so, with a wooden leg.  It is as good, I dare say, as the rest of them could have done; but they start with such inherited advantages, Mrs. Shand, that he had to do better.

Maggie.  Yes, I can understand that.

Venables.  I am sorry, Mrs. Shand, for he interested me.  His career has set me wondering whether if I had begun as a railway porter I might not still be calling out, ‘By your leave.’

[Maggie thinks it probable but not important]

Maggie.  Mr. Venables, now that I think of it, surely John wrote to me that you were dissatisfied with his first speech, and that he was writing another.

[The COMTESSE’s eyes open very wide indeed.]

Venables.  I have heard nothing of that, Mrs. Shand. [He shakes his wise head.] And in any case, I am afraid—­[He still hears the wooden leg.]

Maggie.  But you said yourself that his second thoughts were sometimes such an improvement on the first.

[The Comtesse comes to the help of the baggage.]

Comtesse.  I remember you saying that, Charles.

Venables.  Yes, that has struck me. [Politely] Well, if he has anything to show me—­In the meantime—­

[He regains the lawn, like one glad to escape attendance at john’s obsequies.  The Comtesse is brought back to speech by the sound of the mower—­nothing wooden in it.]