FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father.
CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what she made of it.
FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word of it.
CONRAD [rising indignantly] What!
FRANKLYN [inexorably] Not a word of it.
CONRAD [beaten] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.
[He sits down again resignedly].
FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it, and religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff they taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the old preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas is a delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing science, have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting, we may just as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig our graves. [The parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the interruption]. Well? what is it now?
THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak to you.
FRANKLYN [astonished] Mr Joyce Burge!