Colonel.  I’d as soon you asked me to sneak about eavesdropping!  Pump!

Mrs. Hope.  Well, what were you looking at these papers for?  It does drive me so wild the way you throw away all the chances you have of making a little money.  I’ve got you this opportunity, and you do nothing but rave up and down, and talk nonsense!

Colonel. [In a high voice] Much you know about it!  I ’ve taken a thousand shares in this mine

     [He stops dead.  There is a silence. ]

Mrs. Hope.  You ’ve—­what?  Without consulting me?  Well, then, you ’ll just go and take them out again!

Colonel.  You want me to——?

Mrs. Hope.  The idea!  As if you could trust your judgment in a thing like that!  You ’ll just go at once and say there was a mistake; then we ’ll talk it over calmly.

Colonel. [Drawing himself up.] Go back on what I ’ve said?  Not if I lose every penny!  First you worry me to take the shares, and then you worry me not—­I won’t have it, Nell, I won’t have it!

Mrs. Hope.  Well, if I’d thought you’d have forgotten what you said this morning and turned about like this, d’you suppose I’d have spoken to you at all?  Now, do you?

Colonel.  Rubbish!  If you can’t see that this is a special opportunity!

     [He walks away followed by Mrs. Hope, who endeavors to make him
     see her point of view.  Ernest and Letty are now returning from
     the house armed with a third chair.]

Letty.  What’s the matter with everybody?  Is it the heat?

Ernest. [Preoccupied and sitting in the swing.] That sportsman, Lever, you know, ought to be warned off.

Letty. [Signing to Ernest.] Where’s Miss Joy, Rose?

Rose.  Don’t know, Miss.

     [Putting down the tray, she goes.]

     [Rose, has followed with the tea tray.]

Letty.  Ernie, be careful, you never know where Joy is.

Ernest. [Preoccupied with his reflections.] Your old Dad ’s as mad as a hatter with me.

Letty.  Why?

Ernest. Well, I merely said what I thought, that Molly ought to look out what’s she’s doing, and he dropped on me like a cartload of bricks.

Letty.  The Dad’s very fond of Molly.

Ernest. But look here, d’you mean to tell me that she and Lever are n’t——­

Letty.  Don’t!  Suppose they are!  If joy were to hear it’d be simply awful.  I like Molly.  I ’m not going to believe anything against her.  I don’t see the use of it.  If it is, it is, and if it is n’t, it is n’t.

Ernest. Well, all I know is that when I told her the mine was probably a frost she went for me like steam.