PURDIE (always considerate). After all, precious, have we any right to wake up a stranger, just to tell him that we are runaways hiding in his house?
MABEL (who comes of a good family). I think he would expect it of us.
PURDIE (after trying again). There is no budging him.
MABEL (appeased). At any rate, we have done the civil thing.
(She has now time to regard the room more attentively, including the tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people here, but they haven't drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder who they are and what has spirited them away?
PURDIE. Perhaps they have only gone to bed. Ought we to knock them up?
MABEL (after considering what her mother would have done). I think not, dear. I suppose we have run away, Jack—meaning to?
PURDIE (with the sturdiness that weaker vessels adore). Irrevocably. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ... (He becomes conscious that something has happened to LOB'S leer. It has not left his face but it has shifted.) He is not shamming, do you think?
MABEL. Shake him again.
PURDIE (after shaking him). It's all right. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...