THE DEAN.
My dear widowed sister, Georgiana Tidman.
SALOME.
What"s she like?
SHEBA.
We don"t want her.
THE DEAN.
Good gracious! Georgiana and I reconciled after all these years! She will help us to keep the expenses down.
SALOME.
Keep the expenses down!
THE DEAN.
[_Embracing his daughters._] A second mother to my girls. She will implant the precepts of retrenchment if their father cannot!
SALOME.
But, Papa, who is Aunt what"s-her-name?
SHEBA.
Who is she?
THE DEAN.
My dears--a mournful, miserable history! [_With his head bent he walks to a chair, and holds out his hands to the girls, who go to him and kneel at his feet._] When you were infants your Aunt Georgiana married an individual whose existence I felt it my sad duty never to recognize.
SALOME.
A bad man?
THE DEAN.
He died ten years ago, and, therefore, we will say a misguided man. He was a person who bred horses to run in races for amus.e.m.e.nt combined with profit. He was also what is called a Gentleman Jockey, and it was your aunt"s wifely boast that if ever he vexed her she could take a stone off his weight in half an hour. In due course his neck was dislocated.
SHEBA.
By Aunt?
THE DEAN.
Hush, child, no! You will be little wiser when I tell you he came a cropper!
SALOME.
How awful it all sounds!
THE DEAN.
Left a widow, you would think it natural that Georgiana Tidman would have flown to her brother, himself a widower. Not at all. Maddened, I hope, by grief, she continued the career of her misguided husband, and for years, to use her own terrible words, she was "the Daisy of the Turf."
SHEBA.
What"s that?
THE DEAN.
I don"t know, toy-child. But at length retribution came. Ill luck fell upon her--her horses, stock, everything, came to the hammer. That was my hour. "Come to me," I wrote, "my children yearn for you."
SHEBA _and_ SALOME.
[_With wry faces._] Oh!
THE DEAN.
"At the Deanery of St. Marvells, with the cares of a household, and a stable which contains only a thirteen-year-old pony, you may obtain rest and forgetfulness." And she is coming!
SHEBA _and_ SALOME.
When? Oh! when?
THE DEAN.
She merely says, "Soon."
SHEBA _and_ SALOME.
[_Stamping with vexation._] Ugh!
THE DEAN.
Salome, Sheba, you will, I fear, find her a sad broken creature, a weary fragment, a wave-tossed derelict. Let it be your patient endeavor to win back a flickering smile to the wan features of this chastened widow.
_BLORE enters with a telegram._
BLORE.
A telegram, sir!
[_THE DEAN opens telegram._