PAGE 11
The Register
by
MISS REED, breathlessly: “What princely courage! What delicate magnanimity! Oh, he needn’t have the LEAST fear! If I could only tell him that!”
GRINNIDGE, after an interval of meditative smoking: “Yes, I guess that’s the best thing you can do. It will strike her fancy, if she’s an imaginative girl, and she’ll think you a fine fellow.”
MISS REED: “Oh, the horrid thing!”
GRINNIDGE: “If you humble yourself to a woman at all, do it thoroughly. If you go halfway down she’ll be tempted to push you the rest of the way. If you flatten out at her feet to begin with, ten to one but she will pick you up.”
RANSOM: “Yes, that was my idea.”
MISS REED: “Oh, was it, indeed! Well!”
RANSOM: “But I’ve nothing to do with her picking me up or pushing me down. All that I’ve got to do is to go and surrender myself.”
GRINNIDGE: “Yes. Well; I guess you can’t go too soon. I like your company; but I advise you as a friend not to lose time. Where does she live?”
RANSOM: “That’s the remarkable part of it: she lives in this house.”
MISS REED and MISS SPAULDING , in subdued chorus: “Oh!”
GRINNIDGE, taking his pipe out of his mouth in astonishment: “No!”
RANSOM: “I just came in here to give my good resolutions a rest while I was screwing my courage up to ask for her.”
MISS REED: “Don’t you think he’s VERY humorous? Give his good resolutions a rest! That’s the way he ALWAYS talks.”
MISS SPAULDING: “‘Sh!”
GRINNIDGE: “You said you came for my advice.”
RANSOM: “So I did. But I didn’t promise to act upon it. Well!” He goes toward the door.
GRINNIDGE, without troubling himself to rise: “Well, good luck to you!”
MISS REED: “How droll they are with each other! Don’t you LIKE to hear them talk? Oh, I could listen all day.”
GRINNIDGE, calling after Ransom: “You haven’t told me your duck’s name.”
MISS REED: “Is THAT what they call us? Duck! Do you think it’s very respectful, Nettie? I don’t believe I like it. Or, yes, why not? It’s no harm–if I AM his duck!”
RANSOM, coming back: “Well, I don’t propose to go shouting it round. Her name is Miss Reed–Ethel Reed.”
MISS REED: “How CAN he?”
GRINNIDGE: “Slender, willowy party, with a lot of blond hair that looks as if it might be indigenous? Rather pensive-looking?”
MISS REED: “Indigenous! I should hope so!”
RANSOM: “Yes. But she isn’t pensive. She’s awfully deep. It makes me shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of my courage in daring to be in love with her–a stupid, straightforward idiot like me–I begin to respect myself in spite of being such an ass. Well, I’m off. If I stay any longer I shall never go.” He closes the door after him, and Miss Reed instantly springs to her feet.
MISS REED: “Now he’ll have to go down to the parlor and send up his name, and that just gives me time to do the necessary prinking. You stay here and receive him, Nettie.”
MISS SPAULDING: “Never! After what’s happened I can never look him in the face again. Oh, how low, and mean, and guilty I feel!”
MISS REED,
with surprise: “Why, how droll! Now I don’t feel the least so.”