MRS KNOX. Dont take offence where none is meant, Mr Gilbey. Talk about something else. No good ever comes of arguing about such things among the like of us.
KNOX. The like of us! Are you throwing it in our teeth that your people were in the wholesale and thought Knox and Gilbey wasnt good enough for you?
MRS KNOX. No, Jo: you know I'm not. What better were my people than yours, for all their pride? But Ive noticed it all my life: we're ignorant. We dont really know whats right and whats wrong. We're all right as long as things go on the way they always did. We bring our children up just as we were brought up; and we go to church or chapel just as our parents did; and we say what everybody says; and it goes on all right until something out of the way happens: theres a family quarrel, or one of the children goes wrong, or a father takes to drink, or an aunt goes mad, or one of us finds ourselves doing something we never thought we'd want to do. And then you know what happens: complaints and quarrels and huff and offence and bad language and bad temper and regular bewilderment as if Satan possessed us all. We find out then that with all our respectability and piety, weve no real religion and no way of telling right from wrong. Weve nothing but our habits; and when theyre upset, where are we? Just like Peter in the storm trying to walk on the water and finding he couldnt.
MRS GILBEY. [piously] Aye! He found out, didnt he?
GILBEY. [reverently] I never denied that youve a great intellect, Mrs Knox—
MRS KNOX. Oh get along with you, Gilbey, if you begin talking about my intellect. Give us some tea, Maria. Ive said my say; and Im sure I beg the company's pardon for being so long about it, and so disagreeable.
MRS GILBEY. Ring, Rob. [Gilbey rings]. Stop. Juggins will think we're ringing for him.
GILBEY. [appalled] It's too late. I rang before I thought of it.
MRS GILBEY. Step down and apologize, Rob.
KNOX. Is it him that you said was brother to a—