An Irritable Philistine. Nonsense, Sir, you can't admire them, don't tell me! Do you mean to say you ever saw all those blues, and greens, and yellows, in Nature, Sir?
His Companion. I mean to say that that is how Nature appears to an eye trained to see things in a true and not a merely conventional light.
The I.P.. Then all I can say is, that if things ever appeared to me as unconventionally as all that, I should go straight home and take a couple of liver pills, Sir. I should!
First Frivolous Old Lady. Here's another of them, my dear. It's no use, we've got to admire it, this is the kind of thing you and I must be educated up to in our old age!
Second F.O.L. It makes me feel as if I was on board a yacht, that's all I know—just look at the perspective in that room, all slanted up!
First F.O.L. That's your ignorance, my dear, it's quite the right perspective for a Pastel, it's our rooms that are all wrong—not these clever young gentlemen.
[They go about chuckling and poking old ladylike fun at all the more eccentric Pastels, and continue to enjoy themselves immensely.
First M.-of-F.P. (they have come to a Pastel depicting a young woman seated on the Crescent Moon, nursing an infant). H'm—very peculiar. I never saw Diana represented with a baby before—did you?
Second M.-of-F.P. No—(hopefully)—but perhaps it's intended for somebody else. But it's not the place I should choose to nurse an infant in. It doesn't look safe, and it can't be very comfortable.
[They go on into a smaller room, and come upon a sketch of a small child, with an immense red mouth, and no visible nose, eyes, or legs.