LUBIN [unruffled, to Franklyn] By the way, I remember your brother Conrad—a wonderful brain and a dear good fellow—explaining to me that I couldn't fight to the last drop of my blood, because I should be dead long before I came to it. Most interesting, and quite true. He was introduced to me at a meeting where the suffragettes kept disturbing me. They had to be carried out kicking and making a horrid disturbance.
CONRAD. No: it was later, at a meeting to support the Franchise Bill which gave them the vote.
LUBIN [discovering Conrad's presence for the first time] Youre right: it was. I knew it had something to do with women. My memory never deceives me. Thank you. Will you introduce me to this gentleman, Barnabas?
CONRAD [not at all affably] I am the Conrad in question. [He sits down in dudgeon on the vacant Chippendale].
LUBIN. Are you? [Looking at him pleasantly] Yes: of course you are. I never forget a face. But [with an arch turn of his eyes to Savvy] your pretty niece engaged all my powers of vision.
BURGE. I wish youd be serious, Lubin. God knows we have passed through times terrible enough to make any man serious.
LUBIN. I do not think I need to be reminded of that. In peace time I used to keep myself fresh for my work by banishing all worldly considerations from my mind on Sundays; but war has no respect for the Sabbath; and there have been Sundays within the last few years on which I have had to play as many as sixty-six games of bridge to keep my mind off the news from the front.
BURGE [scandalized] Sixty-six games of bridge on Sunday!!!
LUBIN. You probably sang sixty-six hymns. But as I cannot boast either your admirable voice or your spiritual fervor, I had to fall back on bridge.
FRANKLYN. If I may go back to the subject of your visit, it seems to me that you may both be completely superseded by the Labor Party.