_Victoria_ was very young and very, very wise. She knew all about the slavery of the marriage-tie, the liberty of the female subject, and high-sounding things of that sort, and kept books of advanced thinking secretly under her mattress--where her little brother found them and thought them dull, and her mother found them and thought them rather funny. _Victoria's_ theory was that all marriages ought to be preceded by a trial trip, but it was her sister _Gail_ who had the pluck to put this theory into practice. She insisted on her young man, _Peter_, eloping with her on the night before their wedding. _Peter_, a simple gentleman with a mouth permanently open, was reluctantly persuaded. Whereupon _Christopher_, the best man, engaged to _Victoria_, insisted upon _Victoria_ also living up to her theory and eloping without clerical assistance--which she did almost as unwillingly as _Peter_. The two couples meet at midnight in an old moorland cottage rented by an artist called _Max_ (no, not the one you think), whereupon two important things happen:--
(1) _Gail_ decides in about twenty minutes that she loves _Max_, not _Peter_. (2) _Victoria_ decides that she hates trial trips. So they all five go back together, and, after a lot of "Tut-tut-what-the-blank-upon-my-souls" from the military stage-father, they sort themselves out again and get married properly--_Peter_ being left over with a cold in the head.
The author, Miss RACHEL CROTHERS, has not strained herself severely in writing _Young Wisdom_, and the result is a pleasantly innocent little play, which, thanks to the Misses MARGERY MAUDE and MADGE TITHERADGE as the two sisters, and Mr. JOHN DEVERELL as _Peter_, gave us all a good deal of pleasure. Miss MAUDE had a part with a little comedy in it for once, and she played it delightfully.
We were playing the ancient and honourable game of acrostics and we had to think of and describe a word bounded on the West by the initial E, and on the East by the final H.
"That which you can never have of mushrooms," was one of the descriptions. It was, of course, guessed at once--"Enough;" and could there be a truer compliment to this strange exotic delicacy, which costs nothing but a walk in an early autumnal morning and is more choice than the rarest flavours ever designed by the most inspired of _chefs_? For certainly there has never been enough of them. I, at any rate, have never had enough. The thought of mushrooms missed must add pathos to many a death-bed.