Written in 1951 and revised in 1962, "A Penny for a Song" features a family of eccentric Dorset gentry: Sir Timothy Bellboys - obsessed with the threat of Napoleonic invasion and constantly devising plans to thward the Corsican fiend; Lamprett Bellboys - Timothy's younger brother who neglects his family in pursuit of his one true love...a fire engine which he dutifully tends in the hope of a major conflagration. Add a languid aristrocratic family friend, stir in an ex-mercenary-turned-social- reformer, apply the steady heat of a local defense volunteers' military exercise and await hilarious consequences. Toss in a young girl's dawning womanhood in the shadow of her mother's dominance, and the plot thickens -- dramatically and hysterically.