MILLIKEN.--Dinner, ladies. My Lady Kicklebury (gives arm to Lady K).
LADY K.--My dear Horace, you SHOULDN'T shake hands with Miss Prior. You
should keep people of that class at a distance, my dear creature. [They
go in to dinner, Captain TOUCHIT following with Mrs. BONNINGTON. As they
go out, enter MARY with children's tea-tray, &c., children following,
and after them Mrs. PRIOR. MARY gives her tea.]
MRS. PRIOR.--Thank you, Mary! You are so very kind! Oh, what delicious
tea!
GEORGY.--I say, Mrs. Prior, I dare say you would like to dine best,
wouldn't you?
MRS. P.--Bless you, my darling love, I had my dinner at one o'clock with
my children at home.
GEORGY.--So had we: but we go in to dessert very often; and then don't
we have cakes and oranges and candied-peel and macaroons and things! We
are not to go in to-day; because Bella ate so many strawberries she made
herself ill.
BELLA.--So did you.
GEORGY.--I'm a man, and men eat more than women, twice as much as women.
When I'm a man I'll eat as much cake as ever I like. I say, Mary, give
us the marmalade.