TOBY-DOG

Would you like me to look out and tell you what one sees from the carriage window?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Everything is equally odious to me.

TOBY-DOG, (having looked out, comes back)

I haven’t seen anything....

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (bitterly)

Thanks just the same.

TOBY-DOG

I mean I haven’t seen anything that’s easy to describe.  Some green things which pass right close to us—­so close and so fast that they give one a slap in the eye.  A flat field turning ’round and ’round and over there, a little pointed steeple—­it’s running as fast as the carriage.  Another field all red with blossoming clover has just given me another slap in the eye—­a red slap.  The earth is sinking in—­or else we’re going up, I’m not sure which.  I see way off, far away, some green lawns dotted with white daisies—­perhaps they’re cows.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (with sarcasm)

Or wafers, for sealing letters—­or anything you like.

TOBY-DOG

Aren’t you the least little bit amused?  KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (with a sinister laugh)

Ha!  Ask of the damned ...

TOBY-DOG

Of whom?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (more and more melodramatic, but without conviction)

... of the damned in his vat of boiling oil, if anything amuses him!  Mine is not physical torment.  I suffer imprisonment, humiliation, darkness, neglect—­

(The train stops.  A conductor on the platform cries “Aw-ll a-bor!!... awl aborr!!")

TOBY-DOG, (bewildered)

Someone’s crying out!  There’s an accident!!  Let’s run!!!

(He throws himself against the carriage door and scratches madly at it.) SHE, (half asleep)

Toby dear, you’re a nuisance!

TOBY-DOG, (distracted)

Oh, you inexplicable person!  How can you sit there quietly?  Don’t you hear those cries?  They’re stopping now—­the accident has gone away.  Wish I’d known ...

(The train starts again.)

HE, (throwing down his paper)

The poor beast is hungry.

SHE, (now very wide awake)

You think so?  Well, I am too.  But Toby is to eat very little.

HE, (anxiously)

And Kiki-the-Demure?

SHE, (peremptorily) Kiki sulks, and he hid this morning, so he’ll have even less than Toby.

HE

He isn’t making a sound.  Aren’t you afraid he’s sick?

SHE

No, he’s simply vexed.