Jill the Reckless (The Little Warrior)

Jill Mariner, pretty, young, with plenty of money, lives in Ovington Square (and owns the house) with her raffish uncle, Chris Selby. She is engaged to Sir Derek Underhill, Bart., MP, a rich, handsome, athletic stuffed shirt who is dominated by his mother, Lady Underhill. At a first night of a very bad play the theatre catches fire and Jill, who is with Derek and his mother, escapes with the help of the man in the next seat, who is Wally Mason. He happens to be the author and backer of the play and to have known Jill in childhood and to have loved her since. Jill and Wally go to the Savoy and there they meet Derek and his mother. Uncle Chris loses Jill's money for her, as her trustee, and at the same time Jill gets arrested in London for fighting with a man who is teasing a parrot. Derek, under pressure from his mother, breaks off the engagement (because of the arrest) and everybody thinks he has done it because Jill's no longer rich. She goes in poverty, to America, to the place on Long Island of a dour uncle (her father had been American). She joins the chorus of a play being prepared for Broadway. She acquires money and buys the play, which is foundering. Wally Mason doctors it and it is a hit. Jill will marry Wally. Derek has come over to New York to ask her, again, to marry him, but the answer is No. Even Freddie Rooke, Derek's ex-fag (Winchester) and hero-worshipper, turns on him in the end and calls him a rotter.

Good, with knowledgeable chapters about the theatre. Freddie Rooke, Winchester, Bachelors Club, Albany, moneyed (but goes down on Amalgamated Dyes), gets happily engaged to Nelly Bryant, American chorus girl.

Source: Richard Usborne. Plum Sauce. A P G Wodehouse Companion.