DEVENISH. Just in case you're going to be my mother-in-law.
TREMAYNE. We seem to be rather a family party.
BELINDA (suddenly). There! We've forgotten Mr. Baxter again.
BAXTER (who has come in quietly with a book in his hand). Oh, don't mind about me, Mrs. Tremayne. I've enjoyed myself immensely. (Referring to his book.) I have been collecting some most valuable information on (looking round at them) lunacy in the—er—county of Devonshire.
THE RED FEATHERS
AN OPERETTA IN ONE ACT
[In the living-room of a country-house, half farm, half manor, a MOTHER and her DAUGHTER are sitting. It is any year you please—between, let us say, the day when the fiddle first came to England and the day when Romance left it. As for the time of the year, let us call it May. Oh yes, it is certainly May, and about twelve o'clock, and the DAUGHTER is singing at the spinet, while her MOTHER is at her needlework. Through the lattice windows the murmur of a stream can be heard, on whose banks—but we shall come to that directly. Let us listen now to what the DAUGHTER is singing:]
Life passes by.
I do not know its pleasure or its pain—
The Spring was here, the Spring is here again,
The Spring will die.
Life passes by.
The doors of Pain and Pleasure open wide,
The crowd streams in—and I am left outside....
They know; not I.
[You don't like it? Neither did her Mother.]
MOTHER (looking up from her work). Yes, I should call that a melancholy song, dear.