MABEL (returning with promptitude). Did you call me, Joanna?
JOANNA (guardedly). I insist on an explanation. (With creditable hauteur.) What were you doing in the garden, Mabel?
MABEL (who has not been so quiet all day). I was looking for something I have lost.
PURDIE (hope springing eternal). Anything important?
MABEL. I used to fancy it, Jack. It is my husband's love. You don't happen to have picked it up, Joanna? If so and you don't set great store by it I should like it back—the pieces, I mean.
(MR. PURDIE is about lo reply to this, when JOANNA rather wisely fills the breach.)
JOANNA. Mabel, I—I will not be talked to in that way. To imply that I—that your husband—oh, shame!
PURDIE (finely). I must say, Mabel, that I am a little disappointed in you. I certainly understood that you had gone upstairs to put on your boots.
MABEL. Poor old Jack. (She muses.) A woman like that!
JOANNA (changing her comment in the moment of utterance), I forgive you Mabel, you will be sorry for this afterwards.