_Min._ Yes, at dear Cheviot’s house. _Miss T._ That is well. I shall return in time for it. Thank heaven I can still eat! (_Takes a tart from table, and exit, followed by MINNIE._) _Enter CHEVIOT HILL. He is dressed as for a wedding._ _Ch._ Here I am at last--quite flurried and hot after the usual row with the cabman, just when I wanted to be particularly calm and self-contained. I got the best of it though. Dear me, this is a great day for me--a great day. Where’s Minnie, I wonder? Arraying herself for the sacrifice, no doubt. Pouf! This is a very nervous occasion. I wonder if I’m taking a prudent step. Marriage is a very risky thing; it’s like Chancery, once in it you can’t get out of it, and the costs are enormous. There you are--fixed. Fifty years hence, if we’re both alive, there we shall both be--fixed. That’s the devil of it. It’s an unreasonably long time to be responsible for another person’s expenses. I don’t see the use of making it for as long as that. It seems greedy to take up half a century of another person’s attention. Besides--one never knows--one might come across somebody else one liked better--that uncommonly nice girl I met in Scotland, for instance. No, no, I shall be true to my Minnie--quite true. I am quite determined that nothing shall shake my constancy to Minnie. _Enter PARKER._ What a devilish pretty girl! _Par._ (_aside_). He’s a mean young man, but he ought to be good for half-a-crown to-day. _Ch._ Come here, my dear; a--How do I look? _Par._ Very nice indeed, sir. _Ch._ What, really? _Par._ Really. _Ch._ What, tempting, eh? _Par._ Very tempting indeed. _Ch._ Hah! The married state is an enviable state, Parker. _Par._ _Is_ it, sir? I hope it may be. It depends. _Ch._ What do you mean by “it depends?” You’re a member of the Church of England, I trust? Then don’t you know that in saying “it depends” you are flying in the face of the marriage service? Don’t go and throw cold water on the married state, Parker. I know what you’re going to say--it’s expensive. So it is, at first, very expensive, but with economy you soon retrench that. By a beautiful provision of Nature, what’s enough for one is enough for two. This phenomenon points directly to the married state as our natural state. _Par._ Oh, for that matter, sir, a tigress would get on with you. You’re so liberal, so gentle, so--there’s only one word for it--dove-like. _Ch._ What, you’ve remarked that, eh? Ha! ha! But dove-like as I am, Parker, in some respects, yet (_getting his arm round her_) in other respects--(_aside_), deuced pretty girl!--in other respects I am a man, Parker, of a strangely impetuous and headstrong nature. I don’t beat about the bush; I come quickly to the point. Shall I tell you a secret? There’s something about you, I don’t know what it is, that--in other words, you are the tree upon which--no, no, damn it, Cheviot--not to-day, not to-day. _Par._ What a way you have with you, sir!