JOANNA. I am very fond of Mabel, Jack. I should like to be the best friend she has in the world.
PURDIE. You are, dearest. No woman ever had a better friend.
JOANNA. And yet I don't think she really likes me. I wonder why?
PURDIE (who is the bigger brained of the two.) It is just that Mabel doesn't understand. Nothing could make me say a word against my wife.
JOANNA (sternly). I wouldn't listen to you if you did.
PURDIE. I love you all the more, dear, for saying that. But Mabel is a cold nature and she doesn't understand.
JOANNA (thinking never of herself but only of him). She doesn't appreciate your finer qualities.
PURDIE (ruminating). That's it. But of course I am difficult. I always was a strange, strange creature. I often think, Joanna, that I am rather like a flower that has never had the sun to shine on it nor the rain to water it.
JOANNA. You break my heart.
PURDIE (with considerable enjoyment). I suppose there is no more lonely man than I walking the earth to-day.