SIR GEOFFREY. I'm tired of going to bed. One always has to get up again, and it becomes monotonous. Why haven't you gone to sleep?
LADY TORMINSTER. I don't know—it's too hot, or something. I've come for a book.
SIR GEOFFREY. Let me choose one for you.
[He goes to the table.
LADY TORMINSTER. Why were you sitting in the dark?
SIR GEOFFREY. Because the light annoyed me. What sort of book will you have? A red one or a green one?
LADY TORMINSTER. Is there a virtue in the colour of the binding?
SIR GEOFFREY. Why not? They're all the same inside. There are three hundred ways, they say, of cooking a potato—there are as many of dressing up a lie, and calling it a novel. But it's always the same old lie. Here take this. [He hands her a book.] Popular Astronomy. That will send you to sleep.
LADY TORMINSTER. The stars frighten me. But I'll try it. Good-night.
SIR GEOFFREY. Good-night.