Lady Rhoda. I say, if none of you are goin' to be more amusin' than this, you may as well go back to your billiards again.
Bertie Pilliner. Dear Lady Rhoda, how cruel of you! You'll have to let me stay. I'll be so good. Look here, I'll read aloud to you. I can—quite prettily. What shall it be? You don't care? No more do I. I'll take the first that comes. (He reaches for the nearest volume on a table close by.) How too delightful! Poetry—which I know you all adore.
[He turns over the leaves.
Lady Rhoda. If you ask me, I simply loathe it.
Bertie Pilliner. Ah, but then you never heard me read it, you know. Now, here is a choice little bit, stuck right up in a corner, as if it had been misbehaving itself. "Disenchantment" it's called.
[He reads.
"My Love has sicklied unto Loath,
And foul seems all that fair I fancied—
The lily's sheen a leprous growth,
The very buttercups are rancid!"
Archie Bearpark. Jove! The Johnny who wrote that must have been feelin' chippy!
Bertie Pilliner. He gets cheaper than that in the next poem. This is his idea of "Abasement."
[He reads.