"What!" says Hermia, lifting her brows, "am I to learn now that you—the gayest of all mortals—have at last succumbed to the insufferable dreariness of this merry world?"
"You run too fast. I am a little perplexed, perhaps; but I have not succumbed to anything."
"Or any one, I hope, unless it be to your advantage. You are playing a silly game, Olga."
"The world would be lost unless it had a fool to sport with now and then."
"But why should you be the one to pander to its pleasures?"
"Who more fitting? I am tired of hearing you apply that word 'silly' to me, morning, noon, and night."
"It is too late to believe it possible that you and I should quarrel," [says] Mrs. Herrick, in a perfectly even tone: "so don't try to get up an imaginary grievance. You know you are dearer to me than anything on earth, after the children."
"Well, don't scold me any more," says Olga, coaxingly.
"I never scold; I only reason."
"Oh! but that is so much worse," says Olga. "It means the scolding, and a lot more besides. Do anything but reason with me, my dear Hermia."