Brandon. Nothing like the little boy who used to fag for me at school.
Raglan. Lord! That’s a long while ago.
Brandon. Oh, it doesn’t seem so very long.
Raglan. Of course, I used to think you an absolute hero in those days, Brandon.
Brandon. Did you? Well, as a matter of fact I was always more or less popular amongst the juniors.
Granillo. It was I who was the unpopular one.
Brandon. Were you unpopular, Granno?
Raglan. Oh, yes, I remember I used to loathe you in those days.
Granillo. There you are.
Brandon. Why did you loathe him?
Raglan. Oh, I don’t know. I suppose games were the only things that ever counted in those days. I’m sure it was most unreasonable.
Granillo. It was, I assure you. I’m very harmless.
[Bell rings.
Brandon. Here we are. I wonder if that’s Rupert. Did you ever meet Rupert, Kenneth? Rupert Cadell?
Raglan. No—I can’t say I have.
Brandon. No—he was before your time, wasn’t he? (He rises, goes to the door, and opens it.) Ah-ha, the ravishing Leila! Come along, my dear, this way.
[Enter Leila Arden. She, like Raglan, is young, good-looking, and has no ideas. She also has the same tendency to conceal that deficiency with a show of sophistication. In this she is perhaps more successful than Raglan. She has a fairly good stock of many-syllabled and rather outré words which she brings out with a rather comic emphasis, rolling her eyes the while, as though she doesn’t really mean what she is saying. In this way she never actually commits herself to any emotion or feeling, and might even be thought deep. But she is not.
[ 22 ]
