Plot and Counter-Plot

Annie Mundy is a hard-working dressmaker. Her husband Albert has just been fined for being drunk and disorderly and assaulting the police, having spent the money entrusted to him by Annie to buy dress lining. His boon companion is "The Don", a well-educated but dissolute wastrel. While Annie awaits Albert's return from the Police Court she has the support and sympathy of her friend Mrs Noakes. Miss Halliday, the austere Librarian, calls to inform Annie that Albert and "The Don" shall bring Albert home suffering from amnesia and unaware of his own identity. "The Don's" reward is to be money and Annie's silver teapot. When the two men arrive Annie denies that Albert is her husband; she is, she says, Mrs Lancelot Munday, a widow. The plot goes even further astray when Annie informs them, mendaciusly, that a policeman who had been assaulted by a drunken man the previous day has since died. The terror of being faced with a charge of manslaughter breaks Albert down completely. "The Don" decamps in haster, and Albert, penitent and subdued, faces the future as best he may when told that the report about the constable is fictitous.