THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  That accounts for it.  She is in her second childhood.

THE MAN.  Her second childhood!  She is in her fifth childhood.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again resorting to the bollard] Oh!  I cannot bear these unnatural arrangements.

THE MAN [impatient and helpless] You shouldn’t have come among us.  This is no place for you.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [nerved by indignation] May I ask why?  I am a Vice-President of the Travellers’ Club.  I have been everywhere:  I hold the record in the Club for civilized countries.

THE MAN.  What is a civilized country?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  It is—­well, it is a civilized country. [Desperately] I don’t know:  I—­I—­I—­I shall go mad if you keep on asking me to tell you things that everybody knows.  Countries where you can travel comfortably.  Where there are good hotels.  Excuse me; but, though you say you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child of five with your eternal questions.  Why not call me Daddy at once?

THE MAN.  I did not know your name was Daddy.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow,
O.M.

THE MAN.  That is five men’s names.  Daddy is shorter.  And O.M. will not do here.  It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of this coast.  They used to be called the O’Mulligans.  We will stick to Daddy.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  People will think I am your father.

THE MAN [shocked] Sh-sh!  People here never allude to such relationships.  It is not quite delicate, is it?  What does it matter whether you are my father or not?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  My worthy nonagenarian friend:  your faculties are totally decayed.  Could you not find me a guide of my own age?

THE MAN.  A young person?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Certainly not.  I cannot go about with a young person.

THE MAN.  Why?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Why!  Why!!  Why!!!  Have you no moral sense?

THE MAN.  I shall have to give you up.  I cannot understand you.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  But you meant a young woman, didn’t you?

THE MAN.  I meant simply somebody of your own age.  What difference does it make whether the person is a man or a woman?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  I could not have believed in the existence of such scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human intercourse.

THE MAN.  What are decencies?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [shrieking] Everyone asks me that.

THE MAN [taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did] Zozim on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged shortliver he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too old he is asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [He puts up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman].  Zoo is a girl of fifty, and rather childish at that.  So perhaps she may make you happy.