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Five O’Clock Tea: Farce
by
Campbell:“Do you really mean it?”
Mrs. Somers:“I shall not say. Or, yes, I will say. If that woman, who seems to have you at her beck and call, had not intermeddled, I might have made you a very different answer. But now my eyes are opened, and I see what I should have to expect, and–no, thank you, please.”
Campbell:“And if she hadn’t offered me–“
Mrs. Somers, drawing out her handkerchief and putting it to her eyes: “I was feeling kindly towards you–I was such a little fool–“
Campbell:“Amy!”
Mrs. Somers:“And you knew how much I disliked her.”
Campbell:“Yes, I saw by the way you kissed each other.”
Mrs. Somers:“Nonsense! You knew that meant nothing. But if it had been anybody else in the world but her, I shouldn’t have minded it. And now–“
Campbell:“Now–“
Mrs. Somers:“Now all those geese are coming back from the other room, and they’ll see that I’ve been crying, and everybody will know everything. Willis–“
Campbell:“Willis?”
Mrs. Somers:“Let me go! I must bathe my eyes! You stay here and receive them! I’ll be back at once!” She escapes from the arms stretched towards her, and out of the door, just before her guests enter from the library, and Campbell remains to receive them. The ladies, in returning, call over one another’s heads and shoulders.
XI
[MR. CAMPBELL and the OTHERS]
Mrs. Roberts:“Amy, it’s lovely! But it doesn’t half do you justice.”
Young Mrs. Bemis:“It’s too sweet for anything, Mrs. Somers.”
Mrs. Crashaw:“Why did you let the man put you into that ridiculous seventeenth-century dress? Can’t he paint a modern frock?”
Mrs. Wharton:“But what exquisite coloring, Mrs. Somers!”
Mrs. Miller:“He’s got just your lovely turn of the head.”
Miss Bayly:“And the way you hold your fan–what character he’s thrown into it!”
Mrs. Roberts:“And that fall of the skirt, Amy; that skirt is full of character!” She discovers Mr. Campbell behind the tea-urn. He has Mrs. Somers’s light wrap on his shoulders, and her fan in his hand, and he alternately hides his blushes with it, and coquettishly folds it and pats his mouth in a gross caricature of Mrs. Somers’s manner. In rising he twitches his coat forward in a similar burlesque of a lady’s management of her skirt. “Why, where is Amy, Willis?”
Campbell:“Gone a moment. Some trouble about–the hot water.”
Lawton:“Hot water that you’ve been getting into? Ah, young man, look me in the eye!”
Campbell:“Your glass one, Doctor?”
Young Mr. Bemis:“Why, my dear, has your father got a glass eye?”
Mrs. Bemis:“Of course he hasn’t! What an idea! I don’t know what Mr. Campbell means.”
Lawton:“I’ve no doubt he wishes I had a glass eye–two of them, for that matter. But that isn’t answering my question. Where is Mrs. Somers?”
Campbell:“That was my sister’s question, and I did answer it. Have some tea, ladies? I’m glad you like my portrait, and that you think he’s got my lovely turn of the head, and the way I hold my fan, and the character of my skirt; but I agree with you that it isn’t half as pretty as I am.”
The Ladies:“Oh, what shall we do to him? Prescribe for us, Doctor.”
Campbell:“No, no! I want the Doctor’s services myself. I don’t want him to give me his medicines. I want him to give me away.”
Lawton:“You’re tired of giving yourself away, then?”