Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/148

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN and confides in the telephone, "I am absolutely alone in this big house! Can you imagine it? My maid is being godmother at some stupid christening, this is the cook's night off, and you know the butler left a week ago. What? George? You didn't expect George to be home? He's somewhere on one of his silly duck hunts. It is very awkward, what with the Gainsborough pearls in that little wall safe."

Now we are ready to get on with the play, but the distinction between talking to oneself and talking into a dummy telephone is pretty finely drawn. And if we really were to go in for realism that conversation should be varied occasionally to: "Who? Who? What number are you calling? No, this isn't Pipestone 68-J." Which would be highly realistic, but not very helpful.

Or there is the still more transparent device of the parlor maid with the feather duster. There never was another such a young woman for talking to herself, and expert cross-examination or a police third degree could not have wrung the essential facts from her better than the mere sight of a feather duster. The more sophisticated dramatists arrange it a bit better. They have the second man enter, snatch a