pleasantly_). Stop! You had till four o'clock
this morning to deliver all your arguments. You aren't going to begin
again. I understand you've stayed in bed all day. Quite right! But if
you stayed in bed merely to think of fresh arguments while I've been
slaving away at the office for my country, I say you're taking an unfair
advantage of me, and I won't have it.

MRS. CULVER (_with dignity_). No. I haven't any fresh arguments; and if
I had, I shouldn't say what they were.

CULVER. Oh! Why?

MRS. CULVER. Because I can see it's useless to argue with a man like
you.

CULVER. Now that's what I call better news from the Front.

MRS. CULVER. I was only going to say this. Surely it has occurred to you
that on patriotic grounds alone you oughtn't to refuse the title. I
quite agree that Honours have been degraded. Quite! The thing surely is
to try and make them respectable again. And how are they ever to be
respectable if respectable men refuse them?

CULVER. This looks to me suspiciously like an argument.

MRS. CULVER. Not at all. It's simply a question.

CULVER. Well, the answer is, I don't want Honours to be respectable any
more. Proverb: When fish has gone bad ten thousand decent men can't take
away the stink.

MRS. CULVER. Now you're insulting your country. I know you often pretend
your country's the slackest place on earth, but it's only pretence. You
don't really think so. The truth is that inside you you're positively
conceited about your country. You think it's the greatest country that
ever was. And so it is. And yet when your country offers you this honour
you talk about bad fish. I say it's an insult to Great Britain.

CULVER. Great Britain hasn't offered me any title. The fact is that
there are a couple of shrewd fellows up a devil of a tree in Whitehall,
and they're waving a title at me in the hope that I shall come and stand
under the tree so that they can get down by putting their dirty boots on
my shoulders. Well, I'm not going to be a ladder.

MRS. CULVER. I wish you wouldn't try to be funny.

CULVER. I'm not _trying_ to be funny. I _am_ being funny.

MRS. CULVER. You might be serious for once.

CULVER. I am serious. Beneath this amusing and delightful exterior,
there is hidden the most serious, determined, resolute, relentless,
inexorable, immovable man that ever breathed. And let me tell you
something else, my girl--something I haven't mentioned before because of
my nice feelings. What has