"Is that so? I am bound to admit that your son has not struck me as being a very vertebrate creature, but I don't see what his peculiarities have to do with me."
"Miss Wilson, I don't like to hear you talk like that. I don't like it."
"Mrs Spencer!"
"It shows a callous disposition, especially in one who is, apparently, so young."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean perfectly well. Your own conscience is telling you, as you sit there, that you have taken advantage of his simplicity to induce my boy to do what he never would have done if he had been left alone."
"Mrs Spencer! This is monstrous!"
"It is no use your jumping up from your chair in that excitable manner and raising your voice. I am here to do my duty as a mother, and as the wife of the rector of this parish. Already your machinations have created a scandal, and you have set the whole place by the ears. Can you deny that you have entangled my son in a dreadful business, the end and aim of which is to perform in public a stage play for which you are responsible?"
"I presume that you are aware that you are alluding to Mr Frank Spencer's own musical comedy."
"It is not straightforward of you to attempt to take up such an attitude, Miss Wilson. Is it not a fact that for the play--which Mrs Parker informs me is of an absolutely impossible kind--"