ARTH. You’d better by half shoulder your gun and have a pop at the partridges!
COL. Thankee—I never went out with a gun but once in my life, and then I shot a couple of dogs and a game-keeper; so I gave it up; for if I’d gone on as I began, dogs and game-keepers would have been at a premium long before this!
ARTH. Ah! it was a bad business for you, uncle, that you didn’t take a wife.
COL. It would have been a precious deal worse for my wife if I had!
ARTH. Well, every one to his taste. What you call existence I call a state of positive torpidity. It may suit you; but at my age a man hungers and thirsts after a little more excitement.
COL. Then why the deuce don’t you take it? Go out fishing—in the duck-pond—or go and see the cows milked, or the pigs fed; or, better still, here’s no end of excitement for you under your very nose.
ARTH. Where?
COL. At that window (pointing to window); gardener always at work rolling the lawn, or watering the flowers, or picking up worms, or killing slugs, and without the slightest fatigue for you; all you have to do is to settle yourself down at the window—
ARTH. Settle down, eh? My dear uncle, that’s the very thing I want to do! In a word, Myrtle Vane—Lady Fritterly’s sister—
COL. Ugh! The old story over again, eh? Lady Fritterly’s sister is a niceish sort of girl—