hem
at once). Suppose you were all little fishes at the bottom of the sea--

(He is not quite satisfied with his position, though sure that the fault
must lie with the chair for being too high, not with him for being too
short. CRICHTON'S suggestion was not perhaps a bad one after all. He
lifts the stool, but hastily conceals it behind him on the entrance of
the LADIES CATHERINE and AGATHA, two daughters of the house. CATHERINE
is twenty, and AGATHA two years younger. They are very fashionable young
women indeed, who might wake up for a dance, but they are very lazy,
CATHERINE being two years lazier than AGATHA.)

ERNEST (uneasily jocular, because he is concealing the footstool). And
how are my little friends to-day?

AGATHA (contriving to reach a settee). Don't be silly, Ernest. If you
want to know how we are, we are dead. Even to think of entertaining the
servants is so exhausting.

CATHERINE (subsiding nearer the door). Besides which, we have had to
decide what frocks to take with us on the yacht, and that is such a
mental strain.

ERNEST. You poor over-worked things. (Evidently AGATHA is his favourite,
for he helps her to put her feet on the settee, while CATHERINE has to
dispose of her own feet.) Rest your weary limbs.

CATHERINE (perhaps in revenge). But why have you a footstool in your
hand?

AGATHA. Yes?

ERNEST. Why? (Brilliantly; but to be sure he has had time to think it
out.) You see, as the servants are to be the guests I must be butler. I
was practising. This is a tray, observe.

(Holding the footstool as a tray, he minces across the room like an
accomplished footman. The gods favour him, for just here LADY MARY
enters, and he holds out the footstool to her.)

Tea, my lady?

(LADY MARY is a beautiful creature of twenty-two, and is of a natural
hauteur which is at once the fury and the envy of her sisters. If she
chooses she can make you seem so insignificant that you feel you might
be swept away with the crumb-brush. She seldom chooses, because of the
trouble of preening herself as she does it; she is usually content to
show that you merely tire her eyes. She often seems to be about to go
to sleep in the middle of a remark: there is quite a long and anxious
pause, and then she continues, like a clock that hesitates, bored in the
middle of its strike.)

LADY MARY (arching her brows). It is only you, Ernest; I thought there
was some one here (and she also bestows herself on cushions).

ERNE