Mrs Jennings. I am, indeed! More than in anything else.
Duke. Oh, how I admire you for it! Now that is my ideal of what a woman's interest in life should be. I love to picture her graceful feminine intelligence playing round such things as—as—
Mrs Jennings. Tomatoes—
Duke. Exactly. Tomatoes, or some other fragrant product of the soil. There is to me something repulsive in the idea of a woman's mind endeavouring to grapple with magisterial problems or political research. No! Let her rather spend hours of patient investigation amongst her saucepans, endeavouring to wring from them their secrets.
Mrs Jennings. It doesn't take me as long as that, I can tell you, to find out if a saucepan is clean or dirty.
Duke. I was thinking of the finer problems of the saucepan, the delicate combinations which reveal the true artist. Tell me, dear lady, do you ever go into your kitchen, and play the part of tutelary genius of your establishment?
Mrs Jennings. Into my kitchen!!! I should think so! I'm hardly ever out of it.
Duke. I was sure of it. I picture you flitting to and fro, presiding over the culinary labours of the day, surrounded by a bevy of deft and noiseless maidens—
Mrs Jennings. Oh, as to that, the less we say about them, the better. Kitchen-maids are a set of careless, chattering hussies. They break the plates and burn the vegetables, and then they say their mothers are ill and they must go away.
Duke [puzzled]. Oh! Are they such good daughters?