Mr. S.-H. (glaring at her). Is it not a nice thing for the wife of a respectable City stockbroker to sit at the breakfast-table making a noise like that of a cow that is waiting to be milked?
Mrs. S.-H. (hurt). It is keening I am.
Gertrude (passing him "The Morning Post"). Is it not enough that the price of butter is up another threepence this blessed day, and the wind rising, rising, and the rain falling, falling?
Mr. S.-H. It is destroyed we shall all be entirely.
Cyril (gazing into the depths of his egg). There was a strange queer dream I was after having the night that has gone. It was on the rocks I was....
Mr. S.-H. (glaring at the market reports). It is on the rocks we shall all be.
Cyril. ... on the rocks I was by the sea-shore ...
Dora (slightly hysterically). With the wind rising, rising?
Cyril (nodding). ... and the rain falling, falling. And a woman of the chorus drove up in a taxi, and the man that had the driving of it was eating an orange. The woman came and sat by the side of me, and the peroxide in her hair made it gleam like the pale gold coins that were in the banks before the Great War (more dreamily). Never a word said she when I hung a chain of cold, cold sausages about her neck, but her eyes were shining, shining, and into my hands she put a tin of corned beef. And it is destroyed I was with the love of her, and would have kissed her lips but I saw the park-keeper coming, coming out of the sea for tickets, and I fled from the strange queer terror of it, and found myself by a lamp-post in Hackney Wick with the wind rising, rising, and the rain falling, falling.
[He stops. The others stare at him and at one another in piteous inquiry. The women begin keening. Mr. S.-H. seizes the remaining egg and cracks it viciously.