Campbell: “I think you can’t. Come, now, Agnes! It’s a failure. Own up, and bring the rest of the company out of the next room. I suppose almost anything is allowable at this festive season, but this is pretty feeble.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Indeed, indeed, they are not there.”
Campbell: “Where are they, then?”
All: “That’s what we don’t know.”
Campbell: “Oh, come, now! that’s a little too thin. You don’t know where any of all these blood-relations and connections by marriage are? Well, search me!”
Mrs. Roberts, in open distress: “Oh, I’m sure something must have happened to Aunt Mary!”
Mrs. Miller: “I can’t understand what Ellery C. Miller means.”
Lawton, with a simulated sternness: “I hope you haven’t let that son of yours run away with my daughter, Bemis?”
Bemis: “I’m afraid he’s come to a pass where he wouldn’t ask my leave.”
Curwen, re-assuring himself: “Ah, she’s all right, of course. I know that”—