"Do you mean no one is to come?"
"No one at all, except the tenants and people. Of course they are to have their fun—I'll see that they have a jolly good time. But I won't have our own set and the relations."
"Tussie, they've all accepted."
"Send round circulars."
"Tussie, you are putting me in a most painful position."
"Dear mother, I'm very sorry for that. I wish I'd thought like this sooner. But really the idea is so revolting to me—it's so sickening to think of all these people coming to pretend to rejoice over a worm like myself."
"Tussle, you are not a worm."
"And then the expense and waste of entertaining them—the dreariness, the boredom—oh, I wish I only possessed a tub—one single tub—or had the pluck to live like Lavengro in a dingle."
"It's quite impossible to stop it now," interrupted Lady Shuttleworth in the greatest distress; of Lavengro she had never heard.
"Yes you can, mother. Write and put it off."