THE GREAT KNEE-BREECHES QUESTION
(A Young Blood, in trouble about his legs, soliloquises before his pier-glass)
Well now, this is a doosid nuisance, what?… S’pose I’ve got to face the question, now that all the rest of our set have made up their minds.… Hate havin’ to make up my mind! It’s rotten, simply rotten—I don’t mean my mind, but havin’ to worry over things like this—I never was so dreadfully worried, except perhaps over the shape of that tie last season, what?… Why can’t they put it off a little while longer? But no, they’re all goin’ to wear them next Friday at that supper at the Carlton, and Stella Pardedew’s comin’ too—wish I hadn’t asked her, she can be so cuttin’, when she likes … I’m sure, if I’ve measured myself once, I’ve measured myself fifty times, and I can’t make ’em more than ten and three-eighths round the calf.… I know she’ll ask whether it’s three calves or one, when she sees me comin’ along … rotten joke, too!… Here, let me try once more—where’s that tape?… No, I don’t seem to spring to ten and a-half inches, anyhow, and I walked the whole length of Bond Street this afternoon, what?… They don’t look so bad in gaiters and ridin’-breeches, or under a motor-coat, and when I’m golfin’, too, I can double the thick top ends of my stockin’s down and make quite a decent show, but these silk things, what!… They’ll be sayin’ somethin’ about advertisements for Anti-fat—that rotter Bertie will, I know, just because his are fifteen inches round.…
De Gustibus non Disputandum.—Adonis (after his guests have departed). “By Jove, Maria, what a handsome woman Mrs. Jones is! She looks better than ever!”
His Wife. “Ahem! Well, it may be my bad taste, but I own I have hitherto failed to detect the beauty of Mrs. Jones. Now, Mr. Jones is good-looking, if you like!”
Adonis. “Jones good-looking! Come—hang it, Maria, Jones is a very good fellow, and all that; but I must say I’ve never perceived his good looks!” &c., &c.
Hostess. “I thought you were going to play ‘Bridge’!”
Host. “So we are, but they are playing ‘ping-pong’ in the dining-room, and ‘fires’ in the billiard-room, Jack’s trying to imitate Dan Leno in the drawing-room, and Dick’s got that infernal gramophone of his going in the hall, and they are laying supper in the smoking-room, so we’re going to the nursery!”
THE WORST OF HAVING “A DAY”
Edith. “Here come those dreadful bores, the Brondesbury-Browns! How tactless of them, to come and see us on the only day in the week we’re at home!”