HUBERT: Don't want to sound rude, et cetera, but women don't get men proposing to them every day, you know ... (_Turning over a page_) Gosh, what a wizard machine-- OLIVIA (_sitting at the left of the table_): I can't think _why_ you want to marry me, as a matter of fact. It isn't the same as if I were very pretty, or something. HUBERT: You do say some jolly rum things, Olivia, upon my soul. OLIVIA: I'll tell _you_ why, then, if it makes you feel any better. You're cautious; and you want to marry me because I'm quiet. I'd make you a steady wife, and run a home for you. HUBERT: There's nothing to be ashamed of in being steady. I'm steady myself. OLIVIA: I know you are. HUBERT: Then why aren't you keen? OLIVIA (_after a pause, tolerant but weary_): Because you're an unmitigated bore. HUBERT: A bore? (_Horrified_) _Me_, a bore? Upon my word, Olivia, I think you're a bit eccentric, I do really. Sorry to be rude, and all that, but that's put the kybosh on it! People could call me a thing or two, but I've never been called a bore! OLIVIA: Bores never are. People are too bored with them to call them anything. HUBERT: I suppose you'd be more likely to say "Yes" if I were an unmitigated bounder? OLIVIA (_with a laugh_): Oh, don't be silly.... HUBERT (_going to her_): You're a rum girl, Olivia, upon my soul you are. P'raps that's why I think you're so jolly attractive. Like a mouse one minute, and then this straight-from-the-shoulder business.... What _is_ a sonnet? OLIVIA: It's a poem of fourteen lines. HUBERT: Oh, yes, Shakespeare.... Never knew you did a spot of rhyming, Olivia! Now that's what I mean about you.... We'll have to start calling you Elizabeth Bronte! _She turns away. He studies her_. You _are_ bored, aren't you? _He walks to the sun-room. She rouses herself and turns to him impetuously_. OLIVIA: I'm being silly, I know--of course I _ought_ to get married, and _of course_ this is a wonderful chance, and--HUBERT (_moving to her_): Good egg! Then you will? OLIVIA (_stalling_): Give me a--another week or two--will you? HUBERT: Oh. My holiday's up on the twenty-seventh. OLIVIA: I know I'm being tiresome, but-- MRS. BRAMSON (_in the kitchen_): The most disgraceful thing I've ever heard-- HUBERT: She's coming back.... OLIVIA _rises and goes to the right window_. HUBERT _hurries into the sun-room._ MRS. BRAMSON _is wheeled back from the kitchen by_ MRS. TERENCE, _to the centre of the room. She_ (MRS. BRAMSON) _has found the pretext for the scene she has been longing to make since she got up this morning._ MRS. BRAMSON: Fetch that girl here. This minute. MRS. TERENCE: Oh, leave the child alone. MRS. BRAMSON: Leave her alone, the little sneak-thief? Fetch her here. MRS. TERENCE (_at the top of her voice_): Dora! (_Opening the front door and calling into the trees_) Dora! OLIVIA: What's Dora done now?