SIR DENIS Donal, Donal, be reasonable and agreeable, man.  You should know that people are never the same after royal favours have been conferred on them.  And though I am perfectly satisfied with myself and my social standin’, such as it is, yet, as you know, we must look to the future of our children.

DONAL Well, of all the old mollycoddlin’ bladderskites that ever I listened to, you beat them all.

SIR DENIS Restrain yourself, Donal, and leave me finish.  Well, I was about to say, when you interrupted, that when Finbarr has learnt how to behave like a real gentleman, and can hold a cup of afternoon tea on his knee without spillin’ it all over himself, then he may aspire to higher things, and want a wife who can play the violin as well as the piano, and speak all the languages in the world also.

DONAL Wisha bad luck and misfortune to your blasted impudence, to cast a reflection on my daughter, and she that can play twenty-one tunes on the piano, all by herself and from the music too.  And she can play the typewriter as well, and that’s more than any one belongin’ to you can do.  ’Tis well you know there’s no more music in the Delahunty family than there would be in an old cow or a mangy jackass that you’d find grazin’ by the roadside.

KITTY Tell him all I know about Irish, French, and German too, father.

DONAL The next thing I will tell him is to take himself and his bloody tall hat out of my house and never show his face here again.

LADY DELAHUNTY
I’m surprised at you to speak like that to Sir Denis.

DONAL
Sir Denis be damned, ma’am.

SIR DENIS (as he rises to go and requests Lady Delahunty to do likewise) Lady Delahunty, if you please.

[A loud knocking is heard at the door.  Kitty opens and Constable Dunlea enters.  As he stands by the door, he takes a letter from his pocket.

CONSTABLE (to Sir Denis) This is a message for you, sir, from the editor of the Examiner.  The postman couldn’t find you at home and asked me to deliver it, as he knew I was coming here to-night.

[Sir Denis excitedly opens the letter and Lady Delahunty looks on with apparent satisfaction, as she thinks it is a personal letter of congratulation for Sir Denis.  Sir Denis borrows Mrs. Corcoran’s spectacles and reads the letter hurriedly and looks very crestfallen.

LADY DELAHUNTY (with a look of surprise)
What’s the matter, Sir Denis?

SIR DENIS
What isn’t the matter would be a better question. 
’Twas a mistake, Anastatia, a sad and sorry mistake!

LADY DELAHUNTY
What’s a mistake?

SIR DENIS Ourselves!  I mean we weren’t knighted at all.  The editor of the Examiner sends his personal regrets and apology for printin’ an unofficial telegram that was sent by some malicious person about myself being created a baronet.

LADY DELAHUNTY (grabs the letter and spectacles.  Adjusts the spectacles on her nose and reads.  Swoons and falls into Sir Denis’s arms) The saints protect us all!  ’Tis the truth, surely!