CRICHTON (smiling). And I’m not the first you’ve heard it from, I’ll swear.
LADY MARY (wriggling). Oh God!
CRICHTON. Got any followers on the island, Polly?
LADY MARY (tossing her head). Certainly not.
CRICHTON. I thought that perhaps John or Ernest—
LADY MARY (tilting her nose). I don’t say that it’s for want of asking.
CRICHTON (emphatically). I’m sure it isn’t. (Perhaps he thinks he has gone too far.) You may clear.
(Flushed with pleasure, she puts before him a bird and vegetables, sees that his beaker is fitted with wine, and returns to the punkah. She would love to continue their conversation, but it is for him to decide. For a time he seems to have forgotten her.)
CRICHTON. Did you lose any arrows to-day?
LADY MARY. Only one in Firefly Grove.