The Cap and Bells

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACT HI Scene.?Same as first two Acts. Time.?About twenty minutes to eight in the evening, a week or two after Act II. (lady Chislehurst and Clara in evening dress are sitting waiting. Clara looks sad and preoccupied. Lady Chislehurst is knitting jerkily.) Lady Chislehurst (sitting in chair above fire,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACT HI Scene.?Same as first two Acts. Time.?About twenty minutes to eight in the evening, a week or two after Act II. (lady Chislehurst and Clara in evening dress are sitting waiting. Clara looks sad and preoccupied. Lady Chislehurst is knitting jerkily.) Lady Chislehurst (sitting in chair above fire, irritably). How late your father is. I suppose he has missed his train. Clara (sitting in chair in front of c. table, reading book). The debate in the House of Lords must have kept him. Lady Chislehurst. It was ridiculous of him to go rushing up to London to oppose a Government measure. It's sure to pass anyhow. Clara. Yes, but father had taken a lot of trouble about his speech. Lady Chislehurst. Really this speechifying mania is going too far. Your father has got the bacillus as badly as Mr. Robinson had it. All these people at Westminster are alike. Because their friends laugh and cheer at the silly things they say in the House, crowds of people laugh and cheer at even sillier things in the country; so that the members of both Houses go cutting about Great Britain to a running accompaniment of hear, hear, cheers, laughter and loud laughter, until they really believe what they say is witty or profound. And the end of it all is, that we women are kept waiting for dinner ... we must put dinner off for half an hour, I suppose. (She sighs, rises and rings.) It's all the result of the strike. Clara. The strike Lady Chislehurst (standing in front of fire). Yes. He has spoken somewhere almost every day since it ended. (Enter Hammond.) We won't have dinner till half-past eight, please. Hammond. Very good, my lady. (Exit Hammond.) (Sitting again in chair above fire.) That wretched strike turned your father's head1; one would think...