The Heinemann (H) edition served as the copy-text for this transcription. The United States Book Company (US) edition changed spelling to American standards. For example, "colour" became "color", "recognise" became "recognize", "some one" became "someone", and "lor'" became "Lor'". The US edition also has minor deviations from playscript formatting conventions fairly standard at the time. While the H edition used the standard convention of printing entrances as centered and italicized without brackets, the US edition printed them with brackets. In addition, while the H edition generally did not close the brackets on stage directions right after a line of dialogue, the US edition did. Unfortunately, the H edition suffers from some minor editorial problems and printing errors such as missing punctuation marks, particularly next to margins and at the bottom of a page. In contrast, the US edition has few editorial or printing problems. When there was a question about the text in the H edition, the US text was consulted. In general, where context made a reading obvious, the obvious reading was given the benefit of the doubt without comment.
- p. v: ..."The Schoolmistress," 'Dandy Dick," and "The Cabinet Minister."--Changed the single quotation mark before "Dandy" to a double quotation mark.
- p. vii: Added periods after "Mrs. JOHN WOOD" and "Miss MARION TERRY" for consistency.
- p. 8: ...but I feel like a grown up man!--Inserted hyphen between "grown" and "up". (US)
- p. 14: May I promise that, m'am?--Changed "m'am" to "ma'am" to be consistent with elsewhere in H and also US ed.
- p. 15: MR. BULLAMY--Added a period to end of character title.
- p. 26: He's a great favourite with all our friends--women friends especially--Added period to end of sentence.
- p. 37: MR. POSKET--Added a period to end of character title.
- p. 37: [_Gives MR. POSKET the letter._]--Moved to next line (US) and deleted closing bracket to be consistent with other stage directions in H.
- p. 59: [_Produces a folded silk handerchief..._--Changed "_handerchief_" to "_handkerchief_".
- p. 63: There's a little balcony to that window, step out...--Changed comma to a semicolon. (US)
- p. 88: A few hours ago it was--"By Jove, all is over.'--Changed closing single quotation mark to closing double quotation mark.