Five O'Clock Tea: Farce

by William Dean Howells

Campbell, turning up the gas: "And now?"

Mrs. Somers: "Not half so well. Decidedly pitch-darkness is becoming to you. Better turn it down again."

Campbell, rejoining her in the drawing-room: "No; it isn't so becoming to you; and I'm not envious, whatever I am."

Mrs. Somers: "You are generosity itself."

Campbell: "If you come to phrases, I prefer magnanimity."

Mrs. Somers: "Well, say magnanimity. Won't you sit down—while you have the opportunity?" She sinks upon the sofa, and indicates with her fan an easy-chair at one end of it.

Campbell, dropping into it: "Are there going to be so many?"

Mrs. Somers: "You never can tell about five o'clock tea. There mayn't be more than half a dozen; there may be thirty or forty. But I wished to affect your imagination."

Campbell: "You had better have tried it in some other kind of weather. It's snowing like—"

Mrs. Somers, running to the window, and peeping out through the side of the curtain: "It is! like—cats and dogs!"