I beg your pardon. I don’t know what you mean.
Dickie.
[Looking round at the decanters and glasses with which the room is scattered.] I say, you’ve been doing yourselves rather proud, haven’t you? Who’s been drinking port?
Penelope.
Nobody. It’s an empty glass.
Dickie.
That’s how providence behaves to me. Deliberately puts temptation in my way. It’s simply poison. Gout in my family, you know. My ancestors have lived on colchicum for a hundred years. I feel a tingling in my toes at the mere sight of a bottle of port. And yet I drink it.
[He fills himself a glass and sips it with great content.
Barlow.
It’s a great mistake, of course, to think that gout is a mark of good family. The porter of my club is a martyr to it.