NINIAN: Selina, your habit of interrupting is intolerable. SELINA: I am so sorry. But I had an idea. LORD WILLIAM: How very disconcerting, my love. SELINA: I am going to write a brochure called “The Quadruple Terror,” or “Where the Rainbow Ends.” MRS. MARTINEAU: What are you talking about? SELINA: The Red Peril, the White Peril, the Black Peril, and the Yellow Peril. MOLYNEUX: Bravo. SELINA: I have the half-penny mind. I should edit a paper called the Johanna Cow. LORD WILLIAM: That is really a disgracefully bad joke. LADY EMILY: Well, Ninian, did you have a good meeting? MOLYNEUX: What met? NINIAN: The Conservative Association. SELINA: It should be rechristened the Preservative Association. NINIAN: Little girls should be seen and not heard. SELINA: I should think I could get an engagement to show myself at parties as the one Silent Cathcart. NINIAN: My sisters were brought up to speak when they were spoken to. SELINA: Did anyone ever talk to them? NINIAN: If it is fine on Sunday I shall be able to show you the new cement pigsties. MOLYNEUX: Pigs upset my digestion. LORD WILLIAM: Model landlords exhaust my vocabulary. NINIAN (_undeterred_): You may not be aware of the fact that pigs are very clean animals. It is only a question of providing them with water. SELINA: Warm water? NINIAN: Water. LADY EMILY: How conscientious you are. NINIAN: I was brought up with a sense of duty. My father said to me, “Ninian, remember five centuries of Candovers are watching you.” SELINA: Wasn’t he quoting Napoleon? NINIAN: Certainly not. In any case, he always referred to him as Bonaparte. SELINA: Oh, Ninian, was that a nice way of talking of the dead? LORD WILLIAM: How lucky that etiquette always prevents us from saying disagreeable things about the departed. It leaves so much more for the living. SELINA: But Lord Candover was a pioneer. He didn’t believe in respecting tombstones. NINIAN: I wish you wouldn’t twist my words, Selina. My father was most careful in speaking of the dead, and I am sure he would have hated to be called a pioneer. SELINA: I beg your pardon. He only felt free to insult the immortal. NINIAN: We are all of us immortal. MOLYNEUX: But the fact is only known about some of us. MRS. MARTINEAU (_to TIM. They are on stool D. S. C. and she speaks in an undertone that is not heard by the rest of the party_): What is the matter with Ann? TIM: Is anything the matter? MRS. MARTINEAU: She’s been so moody lately. TIM: She overworks. MRS. MARTINEAU: Every time I see Ninian I realize that marriage to him was the only adequate punishment for marrying him. TIM: He is very good-looking. MRS. MARTINEAU: Why did Ann do it? TIM: She was very young. MRS. MARTINEAU: Youth is an excuse for doing something foolish, not for doing something suitable. TIM: I don’t suppose that the worldly side of the thing ever struck her. MRS. MARTINEAU: Then it was pure bad taste.