ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you were ten?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would you have had her do?
ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest if I met them.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again drooping] I am dying. Let me die. I wish to die.
ZOO [going to him quickly and supporting him] Hold up. Sit up straight. Whats the matter?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [faintly] My spine, I think. Shock. Concussion.
ZOO [maternally] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [Shaking him playfully] There! Sit up; and be good.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [still feebly] Thank you. I am better now.
ZOO [resuming her seat on the sacks] But what was all the rest of that long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [impressively] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat in these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge and Hengist Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime ministership of the British Empire, and occupied that position successively with a glory of which we can in these degenerate days form but a faint conception. When I think of these mighty men, lions in war, sages in peace, not babblers and charlatans like the pigmies who now occupy their places in Baghdad, but strong silent men, ruling an empire on which the sun never set, my eyes fill with tears: my heart bursts with emotion: I feel that to have lived but to the dawn of manhood in their day, and then died for them, would have been a nobler and happier lot than the ignominious ease of my present longevity.