LEONARD. I know what you are going to say—that I ought just to dress up to you.
SHEILA. Oh! he won’t be sensible. I hope you won’t go and spoil things.
LEONARD. Spoil things? [He reflects for a moment.] Confess that you would like me to go away and telegraph that I can’t come to the wedding.
SHEILA. Oh! No. But I want everything to be nice.
EDGAR. Do the thing properly, Leonard.
LEONARD. Properly! I want to do things more than properly. I meant to write an ode on the marriage morning. I’m afraid I shan’t have time for more than a sonnet. I’ve made a start. I’ve got a first line:
‘The jocund sun has tinged the mountain tops’—
Good word ‘jocund’. The difficulty is to get three good rhymes to tops. Of course it might be crest—mountain crest—but I don’t like it. It’s poetical. That’s the worst of poetry now-a-days; you mustn’t use poetical words.
EDGAR. There’s no getting any sense out of you, but look here: Sheila and I want you to be decent over this affair. Just get the right sort of thing and a new hat, won’t you? I’ll tell you what to get if you like.
LEONARD. My dear fellow I have the sense of clothes.