EDMUND. Come away, Elsie. You've seen enough of the Metherell standard to show you it will never do.
ELSIE (her confidence a little shaken, but still fighting). I shall alter the standard.
EDMUND. It's fixed. You can't alter it. It's impossible. Elsie. The modern eye is blind to impossibilities. Have you ever been to an Ideal Home Exhibition?
EDMUND. A what?
ELSIE. They show you little houses fitted up with the cutest dodges for saving labour. I know Mrs. Metherell will have to make her home with us, but it'll be a very different home from this. You can credit me with some imagination.
EDMUND. I do, if you think Mrs. Metherell will ever believe her house is clean unless she or some one else has drudged in it all day. Seeing's believing, and you can't see the dust fly in a vacuum cleaner.
ELSIE. She'll have to use her common sense.
EDMUND. The scrubbing brush survives in spite of common sense.
(Enter Jack, dressed as Act I., left arm in splint. He opens and enters without knocking, but he hasn't time to get his cap off before Elsie is with him.)
ELSIE. You're safe.