A.A. Milne's droll comedy of manners takes place at the isolated country house of Mr. Latimer, an urbane and mischievous eccentric who has made it his hobby to intercept couples eloping to the Continent, luring them into staying at his home for a few days before they cross to the mainland. Under the pretext of hospitality, Latimer subtly tests each pair's compatibility, exposing petty irritations, mismatched habits, and simmering doubts that the romantic haze of elopement had conveniently obscured. As the couples squabble and reconsider under his watchful, amused eye, Milne pokes gentle fun at the impulsiveness of romantic passion and the far less glamorous realities of actually living with another person. The house itself, perpetually receiving new sets of runaway lovers, becomes a kind of comic laboratory for testing whether infatuation can survive scrutiny. Milne's light, epigrammatic style and the play's clever structural conceit made it a favorite drawing-room comedy on both professional and amateur stages throughout the interwar years.

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