Mrs. Black Is Back

Summary

A newlywed woman, Mrs. Black, ensnared by the desire to secure her new husband's affection, crafts an elaborate fabrication: she shaves seven years off her own age and invents a tender, ten-year-old son, 'Little Johnny,' who is, in reality, a towering, worldly seventeen-year-old named John, currently residing in England with his personal valet. This initial, seemingly innocuous deception rapidly spirals into a labyrinthine comedy of errors. As she invents a mythical 'Aunt Prue' to explain John's absence and attempts to regain a youthful figure through dubious physical culture, her financial missteps — diverting funds meant for her trainer to her son, who promptly loses it in a poker game to a Spaniard — bring a relentless pair of creditors to her doorstep. The chaotic arrival of her actual son, following a romantic pursuit, necessitates increasingly ludicrous disguises, including John masquerading as a gas man and, most memorably, as the new cook, 'Lizzie.' All these frantic efforts are undertaken while Mrs. Black desperately shields her truth-averse Professor husband, who has sternly declared he never forgives a liar. The inevitable unraveling of her intricate web of lies culminates in a desperate, auto-driven escape, a dramatic crash, and a subsequent, heartfelt reconciliation born of relief and love, as the Professor, upon finding her safe, readily forgives her multifaceted pretense.

Synopsis

Mrs. Black, formerly a plump, good-natured widow, tells Professor Black, her new husband whom she adores and fears, that she is 29 instead of 36, neatly knocking off 7 years. To further convince him of her youth, she also tells him that her son "Little Johnny," whom he has never met, is 10--in reality, John is a husky 17-year-old fellow in school in England, fully 6 feet tall, broad-shouldered, and quite up-to-date, even to his Irish valet Larry McManus. Not being able to tell the Professor this, Mrs. Black invents a mythical "Aunt Prue," living in New England, with whom Johnny is supposed to be staying. The professor must curb his impatience to see his new son, for whom he has, with great care, been buying toys. So does the Professor's class of gushing young girls, who look forward with equal eagerness to seeing "Professor's Little Johnny." To regain the slimness of her youth, Mrs. Black takes reducing exercises from physical-culture teacher Tom Larkey, but loses more money and patience than flesh. As John writes that he needs money and wants to come home, she takes the $400 due Larkey and sends it to her beloved offspring, telling him he must stay in England and finish his college course. His professor decides that he needs building-up and sends for an instructor to teach him the proper exercises. The instructor proves to be Larkey, who adds to Mrs. Black's troubles by hounding her for the debt due him. Meanwhile her son has promptly lost the money sent him in poker, and gives a Spaniard an I.O.U. for $400 on the back of an envelope addressed to his mother, Mrs. Black. Pedro, the Spaniard, is going to America and decides to look up Mrs. Black; finding her, he demands the $400 her son owes him, so all her ingenuity is taxed to dodge the two creditors and keep her husband away from them until she shall find some means of obtaining the money due. John falls in love with a pretty girl in England and follows her to America, telegraphing his mother on his arrival in New York that he will soon be with her. And Mrs. Black has just learned from her dignified husband that he never forgives a liar. Then things begin to happen, with Mrs. Black as the prime factor. Jack and his valet arrive; the valet is presented as "Aunt Prue's" husband; and Jack masquerades first as the gas man and finally as Lizzie, the new cook. Of course the fatal truth at last comes out, and the penitent Mrs. Black leaps into an auto, about which she understands nothing, and runs away. Her frantic husband sees the machine smash, and when, after believing her gone from him forever, he learns that she escaped injury, he is so glad to find "Mrs. Black is Back," that he readily forgives her deception and welcomes son John.