Five O'Clock Tea Part 6

Mrs. Curwen: "A sister won't do, _either_--not your own. You can't learn a woman's meaning in that way."

Campbell: "I will sit at your feet, Mrs. Curwen, if you'll instruct me."

Mrs. Curwen: "I shall be delighted. I'll begin now. Oh, you needn't really prostrate yourself!" She stops him in a burlesque attempt to do so. "And I'll concentrate the wisdom of the whole first lesson in a single word."

Campbell, with clasped hands of entreaty: "Speak, blessed ghost!"

Mrs. Curwen: "Stay! Ah! ha, ha, ha!" She flies at Mrs. Somers and kisses her. "You can't say I'm ill-natured, my dear, whatever I am!"

Mrs. Somers, pursuing her exit with the word: "No, merely atrocious." A pause ensues, in which Campbell stands irresolute.

X

_MRS. SOMERS; MR. CAMPBELL_

Campbell, finally: "Did you wish me to stay, Amy?"

Mrs. Somers, airily: "I? Oh no! It was Mrs. Curwen."

Campbell: "Then I think I'll accept her kind offer of a seat in her coupe."

Mrs. Somers: "Oh! I thought, of course, you'd stay--at _her_ request."

Campbell: "No; I shall only stay at yours."

Mrs. Somers: "And I shall not ask you. In fact, I warn you not to."

Campbell: "Why?"

Mrs. Somers: "Because, if you urge me to speak now, I shall say--"

Campbell: "I wasn't going to urge you."

Mrs. Somers: "No matter! I shall say it now without being urged. Yes, I've made up my mind. I can't marry a flirt."

Campbell: "I can, Amy."

Mrs. Somers: "Sir!"

Campbell: "You know very well you sent those people into the other room to keep me here and torment me--"

Mrs. Somers: "_Now_ you've _insulted_ me, and all _is_ over."

Campbell: "To tantalize me with your loveliness, your beauty, your grace, Amy!"

Mrs. Somers, softening: "Oh, that's all very well--"

Campbell: "I'm glad you like it. I could go on at much greater length.

But you know I love you dearly, Amy, and why should you delight in my agonies? But only marry me, and you shall delight in them as long as you live, and--"

Mrs. Somers: "You must hold me very cheap to think I would take you from that creature."

Campbell: "Confound her! I wasn't hers to give. I offered myself first."

Mrs. Somers: "She offered you last, and--no, thank you, please."

Campbell: "Do you really mean it?"

Mrs. Somers: "I shall not say. Or, yes, I _will_ say. If that woman, who seems to have you at her beck and call, had not intermeddled, I might have made you a very different answer. But now my eyes are opened, and I see what I should have to expect, and--no, thank you, please."

Campbell: "And if she hadn't offered me--"

Mrs. Somers, drawing out her handkerchief and putting it to her eyes: "I was feeling kindly towards you--I was such a little fool--"

Campbell: "Amy!"

Mrs. Somers: "And you knew how much I disliked her."

Campbell: "Yes, I saw by the way you kissed each other."

Mrs. Somers: "Nonsense! You knew that meant nothing. But if it had been anybody else in the world but her, I shouldn't have minded it. And now--"

Campbell: "Now--"

Mrs. Somers: "Now all those geese are coming back from the other room, and they'll see that I've been crying, and everybody will know everything. Willis--"

Campbell: "_Willis?_"

Mrs. Somers: "Let me go! I must bathe my eyes! You stay here and receive them! I'll be back at once!" She escapes from the arms stretched towards her, and out of the door, just before her guests enter from the library, and Campbell remains to receive them. The ladies, in returning, call over one another's heads and shoulders.

XI

_MR. CAMPBELL and the OTHERS_

Mrs. Roberts: "Amy, it's _lovely_! But it doesn't _half_ do you justice."

Young Mrs. Bemis: "It's too sweet for _anything_, Mrs. Somers."

Mrs. Crashaw: "Why did you let the man put you into that ridiculous seventeenth-century dress? Can't he paint a modern frock?"