Lady Davenport.  Thank you, my dear Julia.

Walter Kent. [Protesting.] No more?

Mrs. Farrant.  I won’t play for a moment longer than I feel musical.

Miss Trebell.  Do you think it right, Julia, to finish with that after an hour’s Bach?

Mrs. Farrant.  I suddenly came over Chopinesque, Fanny; ... what’s your objection? [as she sits by her.]

Frances Trebell.  What ... when Bach has raised me to the heights of unselfishness!

Amy O’CONNELL. [Grimacing sweetly, her eyes only half lifted.] Does he?  I’m glad that I don’t understand him.

FRANCES TREBELL. [Putting mere prettiness in its place.] One may prefer Chopin when one is young.

AMY O’CONNELL.  And is that a reproach or a compliment?

WALTER KENT. [Boldly.] I do.

FRANCES TREBELL.  Or a man may ... unless he’s a philosopher.

LADY DAVENPORT. [To the rescue.] Miss Trebell, you’re very hard on mere humanity.

FRANCES TREBELL. [Completing the reproof.] That’s my wretched training as a schoolmistress, Lady Davenport ... one grew to fear it above all things.

LUCY DAVENPORT. [Throwing in the monosyllable with sharp youthful enquiry.] Why?

FRANCES TREBELL.  There were no text books on the subject.

MRS. FARRANT. [Smiling at her friend.] Yes, Fanny ...  I think you escaped to look after your brother only just in time.

FRANCES TREBELL.  In another year I might have been head-mistress, which commits you to approve of the system for ever.

LADY DAVENPORT. [Shaking her wise head.] I’ve watched the Education fever take England....

FRANCES TREBELL.  If I hadn’t stopped teaching things I didn’t understand...!

AMY O’CONNELL. [Not without mischief.] And what was the effect on the pupils?

LUCY DAVENPORT.  I can tell you that.

AMY O’CONNELL.  Frances never taught you.

LUCY DAVENPORT.  No, I wish she had.  But I was at her sort of a school before
I went to Newnham.  I know.

FRANCES TREBELL. [Very distastefully.] Up-to-date, it was described as.

LUCY DAVENPORT.  Well, it was like a merry-go-round at top speed.  You felt things wouldn’t look a bit like that when you came to a standstill.

AMY O’CONNELL.  And they don’t?

LUCY DAVENPORT. [With great decision.] Not a bit.

AMY O’CONNELL. [In her velvet tone.] I was taught the whole duty of woman by a parson-uncle who disbelieved in his Church.

WALTER KENT.  When a man at Jude’s was going to take orders....

AMY O’CONNELL.  Jude’s?

WALTER KENT.  At Oxford.  The dons went very gingerly with him over bits of science and history.

      [This wakes a fruitful thought in JULIA FARRANT’S brain.]