New. Ah! It’s all very well for fancy-price first-footers like you to talk! You think it’s all a subliminal joke. Still balancing yourselves on the giddy curriculum, you are: so fed up with the fat of your own fancies that you haven’t found out what a tip-top, ship-shape take-in you’ve tumbled to!
[Hiti leans over and fans him soothingly.
New. [Continuing.] Ah! To you it’s only a joke! But when’s the value of our antediluvian premiums coming back to us? What are we doing here now? Stuffing up our ears with stale old lectures we all know by heart,—just because you’ve come in on the giddy make-believe? Talk of the Event! Here, you Hippopotamus, take that!
[Slaps Yunglangtsi on the back.
Tee. Really! You might have woken him.
New. That would be an Event, that would!
Han. Well, anyhow, the Event won’t pay us. Starvation-point, nought-nought-recurring—can’t afford to wait for it.
Hiti. What grovelling Curiosity can’t make out is why they should be marrying him to her.
Han. Why not?
Hiti. Consider what she was—a little Korean slave-girl who couldn’t even speak the language! And what is she now?—future bride of the incomparable Mr. Yunglangtsi, who sits there awaiting the fulfilment of his starry destiny—the Oracle which announces that he is to become the greatest of living artists.