FRANK [quite unabashed] My dear Mrs Warren: don’t you be alarmed. My intentions are honorable: ever so honorable; and your little girl is jolly well able to take care of herself. She don’t need looking after half so much as her mother. She ain’t so handsome, you know.
MRS WARREN [taken aback by his assurance] Well, you have got a nice healthy two inches of cheek all over you. I don’t know where you got it. Not from your father, anyhow.
CROFTS [in the garden] The gipsies, I suppose?
REV. S. [replying] The broomsquires are far worse.
MRS WARREN [to Frank] S-sh! Remember! you’ve had your warning.
[Crofts and the Reverend Samuel Gardner come in from the garden, the clergyman continuing his conversation as he enters.]
REV. S. The perjury at the Winchester assizes is deplorable.
MRS WARREN. Well? what became of you two? And wheres Praddy and Vivie?
CROFTS [putting his hat on the settle and his stick in the chimney corner] They went up the hill. We went to the village. I wanted a drink. [He sits down on the settle, putting his legs up along the seat].
MRS WARREN. Well, she oughtn’t to go off like that without telling me. [To Frank] Get your father a chair, Frank: where are your manners? [Frank springs up and gracefully offers his father his chair; then takes another from the wall and sits down at the table, in the middle, with his father on his right and Mrs Warren on his left]. George: where are you going to stay to-night? You can’t stay here. And whats Praddy going to do?