"I didn't make the war, Bob. I've never been anything but a poor mother, striving and praying for her children."
"Well, you did push one another off—to the tune of ten or twelve millions, mostly the young. Since then, the universal disease of swelled head is being got under control, as they say of epidemics. Only the left-overs catch it still, and Edith and I aren't that. Hardly anyone of our age is. We just don't take the germ. Not that we blame you and your lot, old lady—"
"Thanks, Bob."
"Oh, don't thank me. I'm just telling you."
"And the point of your homily is—"
"That our generation all over the world has got out of Marillo Park. Marillo Park is a back number. It's as out of date as the hat you wore five years ago. You couldn't give it away to the poor, because the poor don't wear that kind of thing, and the rich have gone on to a new fashion. Listen, old lady. The thing I'd hate worst of all for dad and you is to see you left behind, trying to put over the footlights a lot of old gags that the audience swallowed in its time, but which don't get a laugh any more. The actor who tries to do that is pass-ay forever—"
"If you'd keep to English, Bob, I should understand you a little better."
Bob grew excited, laying down the law on the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of the right, while Max, all aquiver, scored the points with his terrific tail.
"I'll not only keep to English, but I'll tell you the line to take if you want to remain the up-to-date, bright-as-a-button old lady you are."
"I should be grateful."