VALENTINE. Am I not the ideal recruit, ma"am: a man without a wife or a mother or a sweetheart?
MISS SUSAN. No sweetheart?
VALENTINE. Have you one for me, Miss Susan?
PHOEBE (_hastily, lest her sister"s face should betray the truth_).
Susan, we shall have to tell him now. You dreadful man, you will laugh and say it is just like Quality Street. But indeed since I met you to-day and you told me you had something to communicate we have been puzzling what it could be, and we concluded that you were going to be married.
VALENTINE. Ha! ha! ha! Was that it.
PHOEBE. So like women, you know. We thought we perhaps knew her.
(_Glancing at the wedding-gown._) We were even discussing what we should wear at the wedding.
VALENTINE. Ha! ha! I shall often think of this. I wonder who would have me, Miss Susan. (_Rising._) But I must be off; and G.o.d bless you both.
MISS SUSAN (_forlorn_). You are going!
VALENTINE. No more mud on your carpet, Miss Susan; no more coverlets rolled into b.a.l.l.s. A good riddance. Miss Phoebe, a last look at the garden.
(_Taking her hand and looking into her face._)
PHOEBE. We shall miss you very much, Mr. Brown.
VALENTINE. There is one little matter. That investment I advised you to make, I am happy it has turned out so well.
PHOEBE (_checking_ MISS SUSAN, _who is about to tell of the loss of the money_). It was good of you to take all that trouble, sir. Accept our grateful thanks.
VALENTINE. Indeed I am glad that you are so comfortably left; I am your big brother. Good-bye again. (_Looks round._) This little blue and white room and its dear inmates, may they be unchanged when I come back. Good-bye.
(_He goes_. MISS SUSAN _looks forlornly at_ PHOEBE, _who smiles pitifully._)
PHOEBE. A misunderstanding; just a mistake. (_She shudders, lifts the wedding-gown and puts it back in the ottoman_. MISS SUSAN _sinks sobbing into a chair._) Don"t, dear, don"t--we can live it down.
MISS SUSAN (_fiercely_). He is a fiend in human form.
PHOEBE. Nay, you hurt me, sister. He is a brave gentleman.
MISS SUSAN. The money; why did you not let me tell him?
PHOEBE (_flushing_). So that he might offer to me out of pity, Susan?
MISS SUSAN. Phoebe, how are we to live with the quartern loaf at one and tenpence?
PHOEBE. Brother James----
MISS SUSAN. You know very well that brother James will do nothing for us.
PHOEBE. I think, Susan, we could keep a little school--for genteel children only, of course. I would do most of the teaching.
MISS SUSAN. You a schoolmistress--Phoebe of the ringlets; every one would laugh.
PHOEBE. I shall hide the ringlets away in a cap like yours, Susan, and people will soon forget them. And I shall try to look staid and to grow old quickly. It will not be so hard to me as you think, dear.
MISS SUSAN. There were other gentlemen who were attracted by you, Phoebe, and you turned from them.
PHOEBE. I did not want them.
MISS SUSAN. They will come again, and others.
PHOEBE. No, dear; never speak of that to me any more. (_In woe._) I let him kiss me.
MISS SUSAN. You could not prevent him.
PHOEBE. Yes, I could. I know I could now. I wanted him to do it.
Oh, never speak to me of others after that. Perhaps he saw I wanted it and did it to please me. But I meant--indeed I did--that I gave it to him with all my love. Sister, I could bear all the rest; but I have been unladylike.
(_The curtain falls, and we do not see the sisters again for ten years._)
_End of Act I._
ACT II
THE SCHOOL
_Ten years later. It is the blue and white room still, but many of Miss Susan"s beautiful things have gone, some of them never to return; others are stored upstairs. Their place is taken by grim scholastic furniture: forms, a desk, a globe, a blackboard, heartless maps. It is here that Miss Phoebe keeps school. Miss Susan teaches in the room opening off it, once the spare bedroom, where there is a smaller blackboard (for easier sums) but no globe, as Miss Susan is easily alarmed. Here are the younger pupils unless they have grown defiant, when they are promoted to the blue and white room to be under Miss Phoebe"s braver rule. They really frighten Miss Phoebe also, but she does not let her sister know this._
_It is noon on a day in August, and through the window we can see that Quality Street is decorated with flags. We also hear at times martial music from another street. Miss Phoebe is giving a dancing lesson to half a dozen pupils, and is doing her very best; now she is at the spinet while they dance, and again she is showing them the new step.
We know it is Miss Phoebe because some of her pretty airs and graces still cling to her in a forlorn way, but she is much changed. Her curls are out of sight under a cap, her manner is prim, the light has gone from her eyes and buoyancy from her figure; she looks not ten years older but twenty, and not an easy twenty. When the children are not looking at her we know that she has the headache._
PHOEBE (_who is sometimes at the spinet and sometimes dancing_). Toes out. So. Chest out. Georgy. Point your toes, Miss Beveridge--so.
So--keep in line; and young ladies, remember your toes. (GEORGY _in his desire to please has protruded the wrong part of his person. She writes a C on his chest with chalk._) C stands for chest, Georgy.
This is S.
(MISS SUSAN _darts out of the other room. She is less worn than_ MISS PHOEBE.)
MISS SUSAN (_whispering so that the pupils may not hear_). Phoebe, how many are fourteen and seventeen?
PHOEBE (_almost instantly_). Thirty-one.
MISS SUSAN. I thank you. (_She darts off._)
PHOEBE. That will do, ladies and gentlemen. You may go.