MRS. TIMBRELL. She was the best housemaid I ever had.
TIMBRELL. Well, well, I think it’s turning frosty again. What are you paying for coals now, Pendleton?
[Enter maidservant.]
SERVANT. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Timbrell.
[LEONARD and MARY enter. He is in evening dress with a white waistcoat and white tie. MARY wears a low dress, not a very elaborate one but quite simple and pretty. The others look at them in some consternation.]
TIMBRELL. Tut! tut! Oh! this is all wrong.
MRS. TIMBRELL. [Laughing a little as she goes forward to MARY.] Well, Mary, you are a swell.
MARY. I didn’t want to be like this. [She turns rather distressfully to her husband who looks round at the company. General, rather stiff greetings.]
LEONARD. We seem to have committed a slight error of judgment. I have, I mean. Mary, you have a sound social instinct. I can never tell what these bourgeois people will do. And mind you [holding out his hand deprecatingly.]—I use the word simply and inoffensively. You understand that, Mrs. Pendleton. I’m an outsider.
EDGAR. You mean a bounder?