, that's it.

(ERNEST, in desperation, appeals to CRICHTON.)

ERNEST. I am not young enough, Crichton, to know everything.

(It is an anxious moment, but a smile is at length extorted from
CRICHTON as with a corkscrew.)

CRICHTON. Thank you, sir. (He goes.)

ERNEST (relieved). Ah, if you had that fellow's head, Treherne, you
would find something better to do with it than play cricket. I hear you
bowl with your head.

TREHERNE (with proper humility). I'm afraid cricket is all I'm good for,
Ernest.

CATHERINE (who thinks he has a heavenly nose). Indeed, it isn't. You are
sure to get on, Mr. Treherne.

TREHERNE. Thank you, Lady Catherine.

CATHERINE. But it was the bishop who told me so. He said a clergyman who
breaks both ways is sure to get on in England.

TREHERNE. I'm jolly glad.

(The master of the house comes in, accompanied by LORD BROCKLEHURST.
The EARL OF LOAM is a widower, a philanthropist, and a peer of advanced
ideas. As a widower he is at least able to interfere in the domestic
concerns of his house--to rummage in the drawers, so to speak, for which
he has felt an itching all his blameless life; his philanthropy has
opened quite a number of other drawers to him; and his advanced ideas
have blown out his figure. He takes in all the weightiest monthly
reviews, and prefers those that are uncut, because he perhaps never
looks better than when cutting them; but he does not read them, and save
for the cutting it would suit him as well merely to take in the covers.
He writes letters to the papers, which are printed in a type to scale
with himself, and he is very jealous of those other correspondents who
get his type. Let laws and learning, art and commerce die, but leave the
big type to an intellectual aristocracy. He is really the reformed House
of Lords which will come some day.

Young LORD BROCKLEHURST is nothing save for his rank. You could pick
him up by the handful any day in Piccadilly or Holborn, buying socks--or
selling them.)

LORD LOAM (expansively). You are here, Ernest. Feeling fit for the
voyage, Treherne?

TREHERNE. Looking forward to it enormously.

LORD LOAM. That's right. (He chases his children about as if they were
chickens.) Now then, Mary, up and doing, up and doing. Time we had the
servants in. They enjoy it so much.

LADY MARY. They hate it.

LORD LOAM. Mary, to your duties. (And he points severely to the
tea-table.)

ERNEST (twinkling). Congratulations, Brocky.

LOR