"Come home," says Dorian: "it grows cold as charity, and I'm getting desperately hungry besides. Are you?"
"I'm starving," says Georgie, genially. "There, now; they say people never want to eat anything when they are in love and when they are filled with joy. And I haven't been hungry for weeks, until this very moment."
"Just shows what awful stuff some fellows will talk," says Mr. Branscombe, with an air of very superior contempt. After which they go on their homeward journey until they reach the shrubbery.
Here voices, coming to them from a side-path, attract their notice.
"That is Clarissa," says Georgie: "I suppose she has come out to find me. Let us wait for her here."
"And Scrope is with her. I wish she would make up her mind to marry him," says Branscombe. "I am certain they are devoted to each other, only they can't see it. Want of brain, I suppose."
"They certainly are exceedingly foolish, both of them," says Georgie, emphatically.
The voices are drawing nearer; as their owners approach the corner that separates them from the Branscombes, Clarissa says, in a clear, audible tone,—
"I never in all my life knew two such silly people!"
"Good gracious!" says Branscombe, going up to her. "What people?"