Read Ebook: A Little Change: A Farce in One Scene by Grundy Sydney

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Ebook has 292 lines and 9098 words, and 6 pages

MRS. P. Oh, you jealous man! You're envious of his success amongst the ladies.

EDWIN. I should like to cut his whiskers off.

MRS. P. And so shear Samson of his strength.

EDWIN. However, I won't vent my malice upon you; I must point out the beauties of the neighbourhood. It won't take long.

MRS. P. We'd better go outside to see them, hadn't we?

EDWIN. I think you'll see enough of them from where you stand. Now, are you looking?

MRS. P. Yes.

EDWIN. Up there's the sky.

MRS. P. Well, I've seen that before.

EDWIN. Oh, if you think that you'll see anything in Dumpington you haven't seen before, why, you'll be disappointed.

MRS. P. Well, what next?

EDWIN. Down there's the sand.

MRS. P. Yes, don't they call it something else? Not sand, but something like it.

EDWIN. Strand?

MRS. P. Strand! that's it.

EDWIN. Yes, some people call it strand. The grocers call it sugar.

MRS. P. How very playful of them! Well, go on, and tell me the next beauty.

EDWIN. Over there's the sun.

MRS. P. But I can't look at that, because of my complexion.

EDWIN. Oh! I'm sorry you can't look at that, because it's the last beauty of Dumpington.

MRS. P. Is that all?

EDWIN. That's all.

MRS. P. Good gracious, how do people pass their time here?

EDWIN. In the morning, they sit and look at the sun. In the evening, they sit and look at the moon. Oh dear, I quite forgot--occasionally you can see the sea.

MRS. P. The sea!

EDWIN. Sometimes--through a strong telescope.

MRS. P. You goose, it's there.

EDWIN. Why so it is, the tide has actually arrived. For the first time in the ten days that I have been at Dumpington the tide is coming in. It's always been going out before. Hush! Hark!

MRS. P. What to?

EDWIN. The music of the spheres.

BOTH. Oh law!

WAITER. This is the public room, sir.

CAPT. Oh, good gracious, do send some one out to stop that very brassy band.

WAITER. The band, sir? Oh, that's nothing. You should hear the Christy Minstrels--them as never play in London, sir--the two men with the harp and fiddle, the blind man with the accordion, the woman with the tambourine, the lad with the tin whistle, the three foreign girls with the two banjoes and a drum, the Punch and Judy Show, the bagpipes, and the barrel-organs With the monkeys, all agoing at once. It makes it very lively, sir.

CAPT. Yes, deadly lively.

WAITER. Dumpington is very musical.

CAPT. Then, Dumpington is very different from its musicians.

WAITER. It's the children what they play to, sir. We've a large family on the ground floor just recovering from the measles, a small family on the floor above as have just had the whooping cough--oh, in the night, sir, they whoops awful--and a middling family in the next room what's just halfway through the scarlet fever; and a very nice attack they're having.

CAPT. Heaven preserve us! then is Dumpington a hospital?

WAITER. A hospital? I don't know about that, sir. The Montpelier of the North, they calls it.

CAPT. Who does?

WAITER. Well, the railway companies.

CAPT. How d' you get down to the sea?

WAITER. You go along the pier, sir.

CAPT. Oh, you walk along the pier.

WAITER. Not many people walk, sir--it's a mile long. Trains start every fifteen minutes.

CAPT. That's if anybody wants to go?

WAITER. Precisely so, sir; but as no one ever does want, they don't start at all, sir.

CAPT. What the dickens do the people do then?

WAITER. Well, they're mostly wheeled about in Bath chairs.

CAPT. Oh, preserve us! Where is Mrs. Plunger?

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