e
deck chair] Andrew: you shouldn't have let me see this place.

UNDERSHAFT. Why, my dear?

LADY BRITOMART. Never mind why: you shouldn't have: that's all.
To think of all that [indicating the town] being yours! and that
you have kept it to yourself all these years!

UNDERSHAFT. It does not belong to me. I belong to it. It is the
Undershaft inheritance.

LADY BRITOMART. It is not. Your ridiculous cannons and that noisy
banging foundry may be the Undershaft inheritance; but all that
plate and linen, all that furniture and those houses and orchards
and gardens belong to us. They belong to me: they are not a man's
business. I won't give them up. You must be out of your senses to
throw them all away; and if you persist in such folly, I will
call in a doctor.

UNDERSHAFT [stooping to smell the bouquet] Where did you get the
flowers, my dear?

LADY BRITOMART. Your men presented them to me in your William
Morris Labor Church.

CUSINS [springing up] Oh! It needed only that. A Labor Church!

LADY BRITOMART. Yes, with Morris's words in mosaic letters ten
feet high round the dome. NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH TO BE ANOTHER
MAN'S MASTER. The cynicism of it!

UNDERSHAFT. It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now
they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in
church.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: you are trying to put me off the subject
of the inheritance by profane jokes. Well, you shan't. I don't
ask it any longer for Stephen: he has inherited far too much of
your perversity to be fit for it. But Barbara has rights as well
as Stephen. Why should not Adolphus succeed to the inheritance? I
could manage the town for him; and he can look after the cannons,
if they are really necessary.

UNDERSHAFT. I should ask nothing better if Adolphus were a
foundling. He is exactly the sort of new blood that is wanted in
English business. But he's not a foundling; and there's an end of
it.

CUSINS [diplomatically] Not quite. [They all turn and stare at
him. He comes from the platform past the shed to Undershaft]. I
think--Mind! I am not committing myself in any way as to my
future course--but I think the foundling difficulty can be got
over.

UNDERSHAFT. What do you mean?

CUSINS. Well, I have something to say which is in the nature of a
confession.

SARAH. {
LADY BRITOMART. { Confession!
BARBARA. {
STEPHEN. {

LOMAX. Oh I say!

CUSINS. Yes, a confession. Listen, all. Unti