Sladder: Alone, eh? Alone? (Aside to Splurge.) It's usual, eh? (To Hippanthigh.) Alone, of course, yes. You've come to call, haven't you. (Exit Splurge.) Can I offer you—er, er—calling's not much in my line, you know—but what I mean is—will you have a bottle of champagne?
Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, I've come to speak with you because I believe it to be my duty to do so. I have hesitated to come, but when for particular reasons it became most painful to me to do so, then I knew that it was my clear duty, and I have come.
Sladder: O, yes, what they call a duty call. O, yes, quite so. Yes, exactly.
Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, many of my parishioners are acquainted with the thing that you sell as bread. (From the moment of Hippanthigh's entry till now Sladder, over-cheerful and anxious, has been struggling to do and say the right thing through all the complications of a visit; but now that the note of Business has been sounded he suddenly knows where he is and becomes alert and stern, and all there.)
Sladder: What? Virilo?
Hippanthigh: Yes. They pay more for it than they pay for bread, because they've been taught somehow, poor fools, that "they must have the best." They've been made to believe that it makes them, what they call virile, poor fools, and they're growing ill on it. Not so ill that I can prove anything, and the doctor daren't help me.
Sladder: Are you aware, Mr. Hippanthigh, that if you said in public what you're saying to me, you would go to prison for it, unless you can run to the very heavy fine—damages would be enormous.
Hippanthigh: I know that, Mr. Sladder, and so I have come to you as the last hope for my people.
Sladder: Are you aware, Mr. Hippanthigh, that you are making an attack upon business? I don't say that business is as pure as a surplice. But I do say that in business it is—as you may not understand—get on or go under; and without my business, or the business of the next man, who is doing his best to beat me, what would happen to trade? I don't know what's going to happen to England if you get rid of her trade, Mr. Hippanthigh.... Well?... When we're broke because we've been doing business with surplices on, what are the other countries going to do, Mr. Hippanthigh? Can you answer me that?
Hippanthigh: No, Mr. Sladder.