JOHN. I never was one for fun. I cannot call to mind, Maggie, ever having laughed in my life.
MAGGIE. You have no sense of humour.
JOHN. Not a spark.
MAGGIE. I’ve sometimes thought that if you had, it might make you fonder of me. I think one needs a sense of humour to be fond of me.
JOHN. I remember reading of some one that said it needed a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman’s head.
MAGGIE. Yes, that’s been said.
JOHN. What beats me, Maggie, is how you could insert a joke with an operation.
[He considers this and gives it up.]
MAGGIE. That’s not the kind of fun I was thinking of. I mean fun with the lasses, John—gay, jolly, harmless fun. They could be impudent fashionable beauties now, stretching themselves to attract you, like that hiccoughing little devil, and running away from you, and crooking their fingers to you to run after them.
[He draws a big breath.]