Mr. Edwards (rubbing his eyes and sitting up). “Eh? What? Nonsense? I talk nonsense? Really, my dear, that is a serious charge to bring against one of the leading characters in a magazine farce. Wit, perhaps, I may indulge in, but nonsense, never!”
Mrs. Edwards. “That is precisely what I complain about. The idea of a well-established personage like yourself lying off on a sofa in his own apartment and asking a conductor to let him off at the next corner! It’s—”
Mr. Edwards. “I didn’t do anything of the sort.”
Mrs. Edwards. “You did, too, Robert Edwards. And I can prove it. If you will read back to the opening lines of this scene you will find that I have spoken the truth—unless you forgot your lines. If you admit that, I have nothing to say, but I will add that if you are going to forget lines that give the key-note of the whole situation, you’ve got no business in a farce. You’ll make the whole thing fall flat some day, and then you will be discharged.”
Mr. Edwards. “Well, I wish I might be discharged; I’m tired of the whole business. Anybody’d take me for an idiot, the way I have to go on. Every bit of fun there is to be had in these farces is based upon some predicament into which my idiocy or yours gets me. Are we idiots? I ask you that. Are we? You may be, but, Mrs. Edwards, I am not. The idea of my falling asleep over Ivanhoe! Would I do that if I had my way? Well, I guess not! Would I even dare to say ‘I guess not’ in a magazine farce? Again, I guess not. I’m going to write to the editor this very night, and resign my situation. I want to be me. I don’t want to be what some author thinks I ought to be. Do you know what I think?”
Mrs. Edwards (warningly). “Take care, Robert. Take care. You aren’t employed to think.”
Mr. Edwards. “Precisely. That’s what makes me so immortally mad. The author doesn’t give me time to think. I could think real thoughts if he’d let me, but then! The curtain wouldn’t stay up half a second if I did that; and where would the farce be? The audience would go home tired, because they wouldn’t get their nap if the curtain was down. It’s hard luck; and as for me, I wouldn’t keep the position a minute if I could get anything else to do. Nobody’d give me work, now that I’ve been made out to be such a confounded jackass. But let’s talk of other things.”
Mrs. Edwards. “I’d love to, Robert—but we can’t. There are no other things in the farce. The Billises are coming.”
Mr. Edwards. “Hang the Billises! Can’t we ever have an evening to ourselves?”
Mrs. Edwards. “How you do talk! How can we? There’s got to be some action in the farce, and it’s the Billis family that draws out our peculiarities.”