WOFF. Sit down ma’am, or I must use brute force (in Mrs. T’s ear): shake hands with distress, for it shall never enter your door again.
[Mrs. T. clasps her hands.
(Woff. meets the children with the tablecloth, which she lays.) Twelve plates, quick! twenty-four knives, quicker! forty-eight forks, quickest.
[Enter Pompey, who sets pie on table, and exit, looking wistfully at it.]
Mr. Triplet,—your coat, if you please,—and carve.
TRIP. My coat, madam!
WOFF. Yes; off with it, there’s a hole in it (Triplet, with signs of astonishment, gives her his coat, then carves pie: they eat. Woff. seats herself). Be pleased to cast your eye on that, ma’am (boy passes housewife to Mrs. Triplet). Woffington’s housewife, made by herself, homely to the eye, but holds everything in the world, and has a small space left for everything else; to be returned by the bearer. Thank you, sir! (stitches away very rapidly) Eat away; children, when once I begin the pie will soon end; (girl takes plate to her mother), I do everything so quick.
GIRL. The lady sews faster than you, mother.
WOFF. Bless the child, don’t come near my sword-arm, the needle will go into your eye, and out at the back of your head (children laugh). The needle will be lost, the child will be no more, enter undertaker, house turned topsyturvy, father shows Woffington the door, off she goes, with a face as long and as dull as papa’s comedy, crying, “Fine Chaney o-ran-ges!”