“Oh, indeed!” said the Woffington. “Then the next two years you shall do nothing else.”
“Ah, madam!” said Triplet. “That passes the art, even of the great comedian.”
“Does it?” said the actress, coolly.
Lucy. “She is not a comedy lady. You don't ever cry, pretty lady?”
Woffington (ironically). “Oh, of course not.”
Lucy (confidentially). “Comedy is crying. Father cried all the time he was writing his one.”
Triplet turned red as fire.
“Hold your tongue,” said he. “I was bursting with merriment. Wife, our children talk too much; they put their noses into everything, and criticise their own father.”
“Unnatural offspring!” laughed the visitor.
“And when they take up a notion, Socrates couldn't convince them to the contrary. For instance, madam, all this morning they thought fit to assume that they were starving.”