Mrs. Dangle.
Really, Mr. Dangle, if you can find nothing more intelligible to read than that farrago of jargon, I shall go away. Pray read us something in English, for a change.
Dangle.
[Much relieved, selecting another cutting.] Here’s the Daily Telegraph—a whole column.
Sneer.
Not much English there, I’ll warrant.
Dangle.
[Reading.] “Time was when the London playhouses had not been invaded by the coarse suggestiveness or the veiled indelicacy of the Norwegian stage, when Paterfamilias could still take his daughters to the theatre without a blush. Those days are past. The Master—as his followers call him—like a deadly upas tree, has spread his blighting influence over our stage. Morality, shocked at the fare that is nightly set before her, shuns the playhouse, and vice usurps the scene once occupied by the manly and the true——”
Sneer.