s. Give it me, father.

AGATHA. No, it's mine.

LORD LOAM. I didn't keep it.

LADY MARY (speaking for all three). Didn't keep it? Found a hairpin on
an island, and didn't keep it?

LORD LOAM (humbly). My dears.

AGATHA (scarcely to be placated). Oh father, we have returned to nature
more than you bargained for.

LADY MARY. For shame, Agatha. (She has something on her mind.) Father,
there is something I want you to do at once--I mean to assert your
position as the chief person on the island.

(They are all surprised.)

LORD LOAM. But who would presume to question it?

CATHERINE. She must mean Ernest.

LADY MARY. Must I?

AGATHA. It's cruel to say anything against Ernest.

LORD LOAM (firmly). If any one presumes to challenge my position, I
shall make short work of him.

AGATHA. Here comes Ernest; now see if you can say these horrid things to
his face.

LORD LOAM. I shall teach him his place at once.

LADY MARY (anxiously). But how?

LORD LOAM (chuckling). I have just thought of an extremely amusing way
of doing it. (As ERNEST approaches.) Ernest.

ERNEST (loftily). Excuse me, uncle, I'm thinking. I'm planning out the
building of this hut.

LORD LOAM. I also have been thinking.

ERNEST. That don't matter.

LORD LOAM. Eh?

ERNEST. Please, please, this is important.

LORD LOAM. I have been thinking that I ought to give you my boots.

ERNEST. What!

LADY MARY. Father.

LORD LOAM (genially). Take them, my boy. (With a rapidity we had not
thought him capable of, ERNEST becomes the wearer of the boots.) And now
I dare say you want to know why I give them to you, Ernest?

ERNEST (moving up and down in them deliciously). Not at all. The great
thing is, 'I've got 'em, I've got 'em.'

LORD LOAM (majestically, but with a knowing look at his daughters). My
reason is that, as head of our little party, you, Ernest, shall be our
hunter, you shall clear the forests of those savage beasts that make
them so dangerous. (Pleasantly.) And now you know, my dear nephew, why I
have given you my boots.

ERNEST. This is my answer.

(He kicks off the boots.)

LADY MARY (still anxious). Father, assert yourself.

LORD LOAM. I shall now assert myself. (But how to do it? He has a happy
thought.) Call Crichton.

LADY MARY. Oh father.

(CRICHTON comes in answer to a summons, and is followed by TREHERNE.)

ERNEST (wondering a little at LADY MARY'S grave face). Crichton, look
here.

LORD LOAM (sturdily). Sil