"Then I wish you would go and rack it in somebody else's service," says Mrs. Bohun, ungratefully.
"Hear her!" says Mr. Kelly, gazing slowly round him. "She still persists in the unseemly abuse. She is bent on breaking my heart and driving sleep from mine eyelids. It is ungenerous, the more so that she knows I have not the courage to tear myself from her beloved presence. You, Ronayne, and you, Rossmoyne, can sympathize with me:
'In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowzy couch in sorrow steep.'
Fancy a frowzy couch saturated with tears! you know," [reproachfully] to Olga, "you wouldn't like to have to lie on it."
"Oh, do come and sit down here near me, and be silent," says Olga, in desperation.
"Why not have a play?" says Captain Cobbett, who with Mr. Ryde has driven over from Clonbree.
"'The play's the thing,'" says Brian Desmond, lazily; "but when you are about it, make it a farce."
"Oh, no!" says Miss Fitzgerald, with a horrified gesture; "anything but that! Why not let us try one of the good old comedies?—'The School for Scandal,' for example?"
"What!" says Mr. Kelly, very weakly. He is plainly quite overcome by this suggestion.
"Well, why not?" demands the fair Bella, with just a soupcon of asperity in her tone,—as much as she ever allows herself when in the society of men. She makes up for this abstinence by bestowing a liberal share of it upon her maid and her mother.