e holds out his feet, and ERNEST kneels.)

ERNEST. O Lord, yes.

(In another moment those boots will be his.)

LADY MARY (quickly). Father, he is trying to get your boots from you.
There is nothing in the world we wouldn't give for boots.

ERNEST (rising haughtily, a proud spirit misunderstood). I only wanted
the loan of them.

AGATHA (running her fingers along them lovingly). If you lend them to
any one, it will be to us, won't it, father.

LORD LOAM. Certainly, my child.

ERNEST. Oh, very well. (He is leaving these selfish ones.) I don't want
your old boots. (He gives his uncle a last chance.) You don't think you
could spare me one boot?

LORD LOAM (tartly). I do not.

ERNEST. Quite so. Well, all I can say is I'm sorry for you.

(He departs to recline elsewhere.)

LADY MARY. Father, we thought we should never see you again.

LORD LOAM. I was washed ashore, my dear, clinging to a hencoop. How
awful that first night was.

LADY MARY. Poor father.

LORD LOAM. When I woke, I wept. Then I began to feel extremely hungry.
There was a large turtle on the beach. I remembered from the Swiss
Family Robinson that if you turn a turtle over he is helpless. My dears,
I crawled towards him, I flung myself upon him--(here he pauses to rub
his leg)--the nasty, spiteful brute.

LADY MARY. You didn't turn him over?

LORD LOAM (vindictively, though he is a kindly man). Mary, the senseless
thing wouldn't wait; I found that none of them would wait.

CATHERINE. We should have been as badly off if Crichton hadn't--

LADY MARY (quickly). Don't praise Crichton.

LORD LOAM. And then those beastly monkeys, I always understood that if
you flung stones at them they would retaliate by flinging cocoa-nuts at
you. Would you believe it, I flung a hundred stones, and not one monkey
had sufficient intelligence to grasp my meaning. How I longed for
Crichton.

LADY MARY (wincing). For us also, father?

LORD LOAM. For you also. I tried for hours to make a fire. The authors
say that when wrecked on an island you can obtain a light by rubbing two
pieces of stick together. (With feeling.) The liars!

LADY MARY. And all this time you thought there was no one on the island
but yourself?

LORD LOAM. I thought so until this morning. I was searching the pools
for little fishes, which I caught in my hat, when suddenly I saw before
me--on the sand--

CATHERINE. What?

LORD LOAM. A hairpin.

LADY MARY. A hairpin! It must be one of our