Young Mr. Bemis, fervently: “Oh, you needn’t be! It is perfectly natural you should.”
Mrs. Curwen: “I’m too badly scared for tears. Mr. Miller, you seem to be in charge of this expedition—couldn’t you do something? Throw out ballast, or let the boy down in a parachute? Or I’ve read of a shipwreck where the survivors, in an open boat, joined in a cry, and attracted the notice of a vessel that was going to pass them. We might join in a cry.”
Miller: “Oh, it’s all very well joking, Mrs. Curwen”—
Mrs. Curwen: “You call it joking!”
Miller: “But it’s not so amusing, being cooped up here indefinitely. I don’t know how we’re to get out. We can’t join in a cry, and rouse the whole house. It would be ridiculous.”
Mrs. Curwen: “And our present attitude is so eminently dignified! Well, I suppose we shall have to cast lots pretty soon to see which of us shall be sacrificed to nourish the survivors. It’s long past dinner-time.”
Miss Lawton, breaking down: “Oh, don’t say such terrible things.”
Young Mr. Bemis, indignantly comforting her: “Don’t, don’t cry. There’s no danger. It’s perfectly safe.”
Miller to The Elevator Boy: “Couldn’t you climb up the cable, and get on to the landing, and—ah!—get somebody?”
The Elevator Boy: “I could, maybe, if there was a hole in the roof.”