What hair, nyum nyum! and the nape of her neck; and her body--how slender! and what lovely movements, nyum nyum! (_Approaching ASTON and speaking into his ear._) Eh? eh? eh?
Go away, you pig. Go away. (_He holds up his dummy as a shield: CAIN retires discomfited._)
(_Speaking over the head of her dummy._) No; I never read novels. They are mostly so frightful, aren't they?
(_Enthusiastically._) How splendid! Neither do I. I only write them sometimes, that's all. (_They abandon their dummies, which fall limply into one another's arms and collapse on to the floor with an expiring sigh._)
Oh, I'd very much rather you didn't know. I shouldn't like you ever to read one of them. They're all awful: still, they keep the pot boiling, you know. But tell me, what do you read?
Mostly history, and philosophy, and a little criticism and psychology, and lots of poetry.
My dear young lady! how wonderful, how altogether unexpectedly splendid. (_CAIN emerges with the third brother, SIR JASPER, who is a paler, thinner, more sinister and aristocratic ASTON._)
What a perfect sentence that was of yours, Aston: quite Henry Jamesian! "My dear young lady"--as though you were forty years her senior; and the rare old-worldliness of that "altogether unexpectedly splendid"! Admirable. I don't remember your ever employing quite exactly this opening gambit before: but of course there were things very like it. (_To CAIN._) What a nasty spectacle you are, Cain, gnashing your teeth like that!
(_ASTON and TOPSY are enthusiastically talking about books: the two brothers, finding themselves quite unnoticed, retire into the shade of their twangum tree. BELLE GARRICK has been hovering behind TOPSY for some time past. She is more obviously pretty than her sister, full-bosomed and with a loose, red, laughing mouth. Unable to attract TOPSY'S attention, she turns round and calls, "HENRIKA." A pale face with wide, surprised eyes peeps round the trunk, hairy like a mammoth's leg, of a kadapoo tree with magenta leaves and flame-coloured blossoms. This is HENRIKA, TOPSY'S youngest sister. She is dressed in a little white muslin frock set off with blue ribbons._)
(_Tiptoes forward._) Here I am; what is it? I was rather frightened of that man. But he really seems quite nice and tame, doesn't he?