(Sticking a lily in his button-hole.) I, too, wanted to
marry her originally.

RODRIGO. You wanted to marry her originally?

SCHIGOLCH. Didn't you, too, want to marry her originally?

RODRIGO. You bet I wanted to marry her originally!

SCHIGOLCH. Who has not wanted to marry her originally!!

RODRIGO. I would never have got a better!

SCHIGOLCH. She has let no one regret that he didn't marry her.

RODRIGO. Then she's not your child?

SCHIGOLCH. Never occurs to her.

HUGENBERG. What is her father's name then?

SCHIGOLCH. She has boasted of me!

HUGENBERG. What is her father's name then?

SCHIGOLCH. What's he say?

RODRIGO. What her father's name is.

SCHIGOLCH. She never had one.

LULU. (Comes down from the gallery and sits again on Hugenberg's
chair-arm.) What have I never had?

ALL THREE. A father.

LULU. Yes, sure--I'm a wonder-child. (To Hugenberg.) How are you
getting along with your father?

RODRIGO. He smokes a respectable cigar, anyway, the police-captain.

SCHIGOLCH. Have you locked up upstairs?

LULU. There is the key.

SCHIGOLCH. Better have left it in the lock.

LULU. Why?

SCHIGOLCH. So no one can unlock it from outside.

RODRIGO. Isn't he at the stock-exchange?

LULU. Oh, yes, but he suffers from persecution-mania.

RODRIGO. I take him by the feet, and yup!--there he stays sticking to
the roof.

LULU. He hunts you into a mouse-hole with the corner of his eye.

RODRIGO. What does he hunt? Who does he hunt? (Baring his arm.) Just
look at this biceps!

LULU. Show me. (Goes left.)

RODRIGO. (Hitting himself on the muscle.) Granite. Wrought-iron!

LULU. (Feeling by turns Rodrigo's arm and her own.) If you only didn't
have such long ears--

FERDINAND. (Entering, rear-centre.) Doctor Schoen!

RODRIGO. The rogue! (Jumps up, starts behind the fire-screen,
recoils.) God preserve me! (Hides, lower left, behind the curtains.)

SCHIGOLCH. Give me the key! (Takes it and drags himself up the stairs.)

LULU. (Hugenberg having slid under the table.) Show him in!

HUGENBERG. (Under the front edge of the table-cloth, listening; to
himself.) If he doesn't stay--we'll be alone.

LULU. (Poking him with her toe.) Sh! (Hugenberg disappears. Alva is
shown in by Ferdinand.)

ALVA. (In evening dress.) Methinks the matinee will take place with
burning lamps. I've-- (Notices Schigolch painfully climbing the
stairs.) What the ---- is that?

LULU. An old friend of your father's.

ALVA.