major booth voysey. [scowling helplessly around.] My goodness! . . one can never find anything in this house.
mr. colpus. I won't say good-bye then.
He is sliding through the half opened door when ethel meets him flinging it wide. She is the younger daughter, the baby of the family, but twenty-three now.
mr. voysey. I say, it's cold again to-night! An ass of an architect who built this place . . such a draught between these two doors.
He gets up to draw the curtain. When he turns colpus has disappeared, while ethel has been followed into the room by alice maitland, who shuts the door after her. miss alice maitland is a young lady of any age to thirty. Nor need her appearance alter for the next fifteen years; since her nature is healthy and well-balanced. She possesses indeed the sort of athletic chastity which is a characteristic charm of Northern spinsterhood. It mayn't be a pretty face, but it has alertness and humour; and the resolute eyes and eyebrows are a more innocent edition of mr. voysey's, who is her uncle. ethel goes straight to her father [though her glance is on denis and his on her] and chirps, birdlike, in her spoiled-child way.
ethel. We think you've stayed in here quite long enough.
mr. voysey. That's to say, Ethel thinks Denis has been kept out of her pocket much too long.
ethel. Ethel wants billiards . . not proper billiards . . snooker or something. Oh, Papa, what a dessert you've eaten. Greedy pig!
alice is standing behind edward, considering his hair-parting apparently.
alice. Crack me a filbert, please, Edward . . I had none.