And now, as I have said, the telephone is installed. The instrument is fashioned in a severe style (receiver and mouth-piece mounted on an ebonite column of the Roman Doric Order), and it stands for all to see as a symbol that in the seclusion of our offices we are in touch with the world at large. But as a symbol only it must remain, for the voices of the outer world that call us up as they search for other friends or obstruct us when we in turn are, as it were, groping after ours, have already frayed the temper of our staff. It was inevitable that under such constant irritation these ex-Service men of ours would one day burst into strong military idiom, so we have disconnected our telephone in order to avoid the calamity of losing our lady-typist.
[Illustration: SOUVENIR-HUNTERS OF THE PAST.
"Man Wanted to lift 1,200 square yards of Turf at once--_Provincial Paper._
Before applying for the job our young friend Foozle would like to know whether he will be required to replace the divot.
If the author of _Just Like Judy_ will look into that commodious classic, _Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book_, he will find a formula for light pastry. And if he will proceed to the (for him) enlivening adventure of essaying a tartlet, he will find that most fatal among a host of fatal errors will be any failure to preserve the due proportion of ingredients. I do not suggest that there is as rigid a formula for light comedy. But certainly Mr. DENNY threw in too many unnecessary mystifications and crude explanations in proportion to the wit, wisdom and lively incident of his confection. In particular he was constantly making some of his characters tell the others what we of the audience either already knew or quite easily guessed. To exhaust my tedious-homely metaphor, if you put in a double measure of water the mixture will refuse to rise. And that I imagine is essentially what happened to _Just Like Judy_.
Irish _Judy_, a charmingly pretty busybody, outwardly just like Miss IRIS HOEY, comes to _Peter Keppel's_ studio and hears that this casual youth has got into a deplorable habit of putting off his marriage with her friend _Milly_. She (_Judy_) will see to that! She assumes the _rôle_ of a notorious Chelsea model, whom proper _Peter_ has never seen. _Peter_ knocks his head on the mantelpiece, just where a shrapnel splinter had hit him, and is persuaded that she, _Judy McCarthy_, affecting to be _Trixie O'Farrel_, is his wife. It all seems very horrible to him, but, shell-shock or no shell-shock, he sets to work to paint her portrait in a business-like way, and at the end of four hours it doesn't seem at all horrible. And by the time it is explained that it was all a joke (some people do have such a nice sense of humour) he is all for rushing off to the registry-office, _Judy_ agreeing.