MARCHBANKS. Oh! don't talk about boots. Your feet should be beautiful on the mountains. CANDIDA. My feet would not be beautiful on the Hackney Road without boots. BURGESS (scandalized). Come, Candy, don't be vulgar. Mr. Morchbanks ain't accustomed to it. You're givin' him the 'orrors again. I mean the poetic ones. (Morell is silent. Apparently he is busy with his letters: really he is puzzling with misgiving over his new and alarming experience that the surer he is of his moral thrusts, the more swiftly and effectively Eugene parries them. To find himself beginning to fear a man whom he does not respect affects him bitterly.) (Miss Garnett comes in with a telegram.) PROSERPINE (handing the telegram to Morell). Reply paid. The boy's waiting. (To Candida, coming back to her machine and sitting down.) Maria is ready for you now in the kitchen, Mrs. Morell. (Candida rises.) The onions have come. MARCHBANKS (convulsively). Onions! CANDIDA. Yes, onions. Not even Spanish ones--nasty little red onions. You shall help me to slice them. Come along. (She catches him by the wrist and runs out, pulling him after her. Burgess rises in consternation, and stands aghast on the hearth-rug, staring after them.) BURGESS. Candy didn't oughter 'andle a peer's nevvy like that. It's goin' too fur with it. Lookee 'ere, James: do 'e often git taken queer like that? MORELL (shortly, writing a telegram). I don't know. BURGESS (sentimentally). He talks very pretty. I allus had a turn for a bit of potery. Candy takes arter me that-a-way: huse ter make me tell her fairy stories when she was on'y a little kiddy not that 'igh (indicating a stature of two feet or thereabouts). MORELL (preoccupied). Ah, indeed. (He blots the telegram, and goes out.) PROSERPINE. Used you to make the fairy stories up out of your own head? (Burgess, not deigning to reply, strikes an attitude of the haughtiest disdain on the hearth-rug.) PROSERPINE (calmly). I should never have supposed you had it in you. By the way, I'd better warn you, since you've taken such a fancy to Mr. Marchbanks. He's mad. BURGESS. Mad! Wot! 'Im too!! PROSERPINE. Mad as a March hare. He did frighten me, I can tell you just before you came in that time. Haven't you noticed the queer things he says? BURGESS. So that's wot the poetic 'orrors means. Blame me if it didn't come into my head once or twyst that he must be off his chump! (He crosses the room to the door, lifting up his voice as he goes.) Well, this is a pretty sort of asylum for a man to be in, with no one but you to take care of him! PROSERPINE (as he passes her). Yes, what a dreadful thing it would be if anything happened to YOU! BURGESS (loftily). Don't you address no remarks to me. Tell your hemployer that I've gone into the garden for a smoke. PROSERPINE (mocking). Oh! (Before Burgess can retort, Morell comes back.) BURGESS (sentimentally). Goin' for a turn in the garden to smoke, James.