During scene TIPPY takes dog out of tub and begins drying him with a Turkish towel.  Has large stack of clean folded towels and uses one after the other.

MARTIN. [As he sketches.] Your persistent love of Class of ’29 reunions seems to me more admirable than politic.

TIPPY.  It will go off all right if you refrain from talking politics.

MARTIN.  As if I were the only member of the Unholy Six with a capacity to make faux pas!

TIPPY.  You have tact and tolerance—­when you choose to use them.

MARTIN.  Thanks.

TIPPY.  The fact that you and Ted still manage to live under the same roof proves that.

MARTIN.  That poor devil would win the compassion of Hitler himself—­with three Jewish grandmothers!

TIPPY.  Well?  If you can put up with Ted, who never did a lick of work in his life, why quarrel with Ken who is now a true worker, being duly exploited by a wicked capitalist?

MARTIN.  Who said I’d quarrel with him?

TIPPY.  You will.

MARTIN.  All right.  You referee.

TIPPY.  If he high-hats you with his success I’ll tell him that you’ve sold a drawing to the New Yorker and you can high-hat him back.

MARTIN.  Lay off that New Yorker stuff.

TIPPY.  Sensitive?

MARTIN.  Don’t be an ass.  It’s unimportant, that’s all.

TIPPY.  Eighty dollars—­unimportant?

MARTIN. [Lays aside drawing, removes eyeshade and rises.] You’ve got me wrong if you think I’ve any qualms about a reunion with our blissfully-wed bourgeois comrades.  Where I doubt your horse sense is in inviting Kate.

TIPPY.  You can’t ask a bride to attend a stag party with four men!

MARTIN.  I could have dug up some other female as a shock-absorber.

TIPPY.  Listen, son:  a man can be a revolutionist and still mix socially with the White Guard.  But a female revolutionist must either assassinate them or seduce them.

MARTIN. [Good-naturedly.] Go to hell.

TIPPY.  I invited Kate because she is Laura’s friend.

MARTIN.  She was Laura’s friend.

TIPPY.  Rats!

MARTIN.  In view of recent changes in social status, are you sure that Kate is still on the calling list of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Holden?

TIPPY.  You’re talking awful rot.

MARTIN.  Maybe you know Ken better than I do.

TIPPY.  Hell, he isn’t a prig.

MARTIN.  Another thing:  What makes you so sure Ted will enjoy being put on social display in his frayed clothes alongside a lady gorgeously arrayed in the price of her shame?

TIPPY.  The very fact that Ted is so shabby will make it less obvious that Kate is still—­[Pause.]—­helping him.

MARTIN.  Kate is really showing remarkable restraint.  I’d have expected her to squeeze enough out of a mink coat to dress Ted up a bit.