Part 77 (1/2)

STRANGER. You want to know a lot, don't you? Well, I'm not married.

LADY PEMBURY. I was thinking how much nicer it is when you can share that sort of news with somebody else, somebody you love. It makes good news so much better, and bad news so much more bearable.

STRANGER. That's what you and your husband do, is it?

LADY PEMBURY (nodding). Always. For eight-and-twenty years.

STRANGER. He tells you everything, eh?

LADY PEMBURY. Well, not his official secrets, of course. Everything else.

STRANGER. Ha! I wonder.

LADY PEMBURY. But you have n.o.body, you say. Well, you must share your good news with _me_. Will you?

STRANGER. Oh yes, you shall hear about it all right.

LADY PEMBURY. That's nice of you. Well then, first question. How much money is it going to be?

STRANGER (thoughtfully). Well, I don't quite know yet. What do you say to a thousand a year?

LADY PEMBURY. Oh, but what a lot!

STRANGER. You think a thousand a year would be all right. Enough to live on?

LADY PEMBURY. For a bachelor, ample.

STRANGER. For a bachelor.

LADY PEMBURY. There's no one dependent on you?

STRANGER. Not a soul. Only got one relation living.

LADY PEMBURY. Oh?

STRANGER (enjoying a joke of his own). A father. But I shall not be supporting _him_. Oh no. Far from it.

LADY PEMBURY (a little puzzled by this, though the is not going to show it) Then I think you will be very rich with a thousand a year.

STRANGER. Yes, that's what _I_ thought. I should think it would stand a thousand.

LADY PEMBURY. What is it? An invention of some sort?

STRANGER. Oh no, not an invention. . . . A discovery.

LADY PEMBURY. How proud she would have been!

STRANGER. Who?

LADY PEMBURY. Your wife if you had had one; your mother if she had been alive.