Claude.
[Who can never quite get out of his habit of speaking in blank verse.] Why are you not at home to Mrs. Smith?
Pauline.
My dear Claude, that woman! Mr. Smith kept a greengrocer’s shop. ’Tis true he made a great deal of money by his contracts to supply the armies of the Republic with vegetables, but they are not gentlepeople!
Claude.
[In his most Byronic manner.] What is it makes a gentleman, Pauline?
Is it to have a cousin in the Peerage——
Pauline.
Partly that, dear.
Claude.