LEONARD (indignantly). I! Not know anything about women!
NICHOLAS. Well, you said yourself just now that you didn’t.
LEONARD. I never said—— What I said——
[146]NICHOLAS. If you did know anything about ’em, you’d know that there’s nothing they like more than doing the ministering angel business.
LEONARD. Ministering angel!
NICHOLAS. Won’t you have a little more of this, and won’t you have a little more of that, and how is the poor cold to-day, and——
LEONARD. You really think that women talk like that?
NICHOLAS. How else do you think they talk?
LEONARD. My dear fellow!... Why, I mean, just take my own case as an example. Here am I, with a very nasty cold, the first I’ve ever had in my life. I sit down for a bit of breakfast—not wanting it particularly, but feeling that, for the sake of my health, I ought to try and eat something. And what happens?
(LATIMER has come in during this speech. He stops and listens to it.)