YOUNG LADY. As in all houses.... Permit us to keep ours! [Pause.
STUDENT. Do you care for frankness?
YOUNG LADY. Within reason.
STUDENT. At times I am seized with a passionate craving to say all I think.... Yet I know that the world would go to pieces if perfect frankness were the rule. [Pause I attended a funeral the other day—in one of the churches—and it was very solemn and beautiful.
YOUNG LADY. That of Mr. Hummel?
STUDENT. Yes, that of my pretended benefactor. An elderly friend of the deceased acted as mace-bearer and stood at the head of the coffin. I was particularly impressed by the dignified manner and moving words of the minister. I had to cry—everybody cried.... A number of us went to a restaurant afterward, and there I learned that the man with the mace had been rather too friendly with the dead man's son....
The YOUNG LADY stares at him, trying to make out the meaning of his words.
STUDENT. I learned, too, that the dead man had borrowed money of his son's devoted friend.... [Pause] And the next day the minister was arrested for embezzling the church funds.—Nice, isn't it?
YOUNG LADY. Oh! [Pause.
STUDENT. Do you know what I am thinking of you now?