Miss Haythorn. I heard you mention it. I wish we were out of this dark place.
Dolignan. I could be content to spend hours here, reassuring you, my dear lady.
Miss Haythorn. Nonsense!
Dolignan. Pweep! (Grave reader, do not put your lips to the next pretty creature you meet or you will understand what this means.)
Miss Haythorn. Eh! Eh!
Friend. What is the matter?
Miss Haythorn. Open the door! Open the door!
There was a sound of hurried whispers, the door was shut and the blind pulled down with hostile sharpness.
If any critic falls on me for putting inarticulate sounds in a dialogue as above, I answer with all the insolence I can command at present, "Hit boys as big as yourself"; bigger perhaps, such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; they began it, and I learned it of them, sore against my will.
Miss Haythorn's scream lost most of its effect because the engine whistled forty thousand murders at the same moment; and fictitious grief makes itself heard when real cannot.