COSMO. ‘You don’t have your medals here, father?’
COLONEL. ‘No, I don’t carry them about. But your mother does, the goose. They are not very grand ones, Cosmo.’
COSMO, true blue, ‘Yes, they are.’
An awkward silence falls. The Colonel has so much to say that he can only look it. He looks it so eloquently that Cosmo’s fears return. He summons the plan to his help.
‘I wonder what is in the evening papers. If you don’t mind, I’ll cut out and get one.’
Before he can cut out, however, Alice is in the room, the picture of distress. No wonder, for even we can hear the baby howling.
ALICE, tragically, ‘My baby. Robert, listen; that is how I affect her.’
Cosmo cowers unseen.
COLONEL. ‘No, no, darling, it isn’t you who have made her cry. She—she is teething. It’s her teeth, isn’t it?’ he barks at the nurse, who emerges looking not altogether woeful. ‘Say it’s her teeth, woman.’
NURSE, taking this as a reflection on her charge. ‘She had her teeth long ago.’