supper; and bring us at once a bottle of mead and a plate of comfits.
Servant: Very good, sir. Shall I lay the table in the dining-room or
Master: In the dining-room. (Exit Servant.) But why are you standing up, dear old chap. Please sit down.
Friend (sarcastically): I didn’t dare—you’re so majestic. (They sit down.)
Master (joking): Never mind! Be brave, be brave!
Friend: So we’re living now in eighteen hundred and
Companion: In eighteen hundred and eight.
Master: That is when my great-grandfather was just the age I am now, when he had retired from his regiment and lived, as he said, “in the gentle calm of my country paradise.”
Friend (sarcastically): So you, our matchless economist, the pride of our society, shining, as it were, like a star in the dark night of our social life, you have gone back to the Dark Ages, to the epoch of tyranny, to the time plusquamperfectum only because the life of your great-grandfather has exercised an irresistible influence over you?
