Thank you very much, but I’m not fond of making a fool of myself.
Grace.
Part of a gentleman’s education should be how to make himself ridiculous with dignity.
Claude.
[To Cobbett.] You make more fuss about singing than a young lady at a tea-party.
Grace.
[Looking at him with smiling lips but with hard eyes.] Let us have no more maidenly coyness.
[She begins to play, and Cobbett, shrugging his shoulders, begins with rather bad grace to sing the song, “I can’t reach that top note.” While they are in the middle of it the door opens, and the Butler announces Mrs. Insoley and her companion. Mrs. Insoley is a little old lady of some corpulence, shabbily dressed in rusty black. She looks rather like a charwoman in her Sunday best. Miss Hall, her companion, is a self-effacing silent person of uncertain age. She is always very anxious to make herself useful.
Moore.
Mrs. Insoley, Miss Hall.