ERMYNTRUDE: Father! What are you going to do?
SLADDER: I'm going to give him What For.
ERMYNTRUDE: But why, father?
SLADDER: Because he's been giving it to your poor old father.
ERMYNTRUDE: Father--
SLADDER: Well?
ERMYNTRUDE: Be kind to him, father.
SLADDER: O, I'll be kind to him. I'll be kind to him. Just you wait. I'll be kind to him!
ERMYNTRUDE: But you wouldn't send him away, father. Father, for my sake you wouldn't do that?
SLADDER: O, we haven't come to that yet.
ERMYNTRUDE: But, but-you've sent for him.
SLADDER: O, I've sent for him to give him What For. We'll come to the rest later.
ERMYNTRUDE: But, when you do come to it, father.
SLADDER: Why, when we do come to it, if the young man's any good, I'll not stand in my daughter's way--
ERMYNTRUDE: O, thank you, father.
SLADDER: And if he's no good (firmly) I'll protect my child from him.
ERMYNTRUDE: But, father, I don't want to be protected.
SLADDER: If a man's a man, he must be some good at something. Well, this man's chosen the clergyman job. I've nothing against the job, it's well enough paid at the top, but is this young man ever going to get there? Is he ever going to get off the bottom rung? How long has he been a curate?
ERMYNTRUDE: Eight years, father.
SLADDER: It's a long time.
ERMYNTRUDE: But, father, he would get a vicarage if it wasn't for the bishop. The bishop stands in his way. It isn't nice of him.
SLADDER: If I'd quarrelled with the head of my firm when I was his age, you wouldn't be getting proposals from a curate; no such luck. The dustman would have been more in your line.
ERMYNTRUDE: But, father, he doesn't quarrel with the bishop. His conscience doesn't let him believe in eternal punishment, and so he speaks straight out. I do admire him so for it. He knows that if he was silent he'd have had a good living long ago.
SLADDER: The wife of the head of my firm believed in spirit rapping. Did I go and tell her what an old fool she was? No, I brought her messages from another world as regular as a postman.
[Steps are heard outside the window.
SLADDER: Run along, my dear, now.
ERMYNTRUDE: Very well, father.
SLADDER: The man that's going to look after my daughter must be able to look after himself. Otherwise I will, till a better man comes.
[Exit ERMYNTRUDE. HIPPANTHIGH and SPLURGE appear at the window. HIPPANTHIGH enters and SPLURGE moves away.
HIPPANTHIGH: You sent for me, Mr. Sladder?
SLADDER: Y-e-s-y-e-s. Take a chair. Now, Mr. Hippanthigh, I haven't often been told off the way you told me off.
HIPPANTHIGH: I felt it to be my duty, Mr. Sladder.
SLADDER: Yes, quite so. Exactly. Well, it seems I'm a thoroughly bad old man, only fit to rob the poor, an out-and-out old ruffian.
HIPPANTHIGH: I never said that.
SLADDER: No. But you made me feel it. I never felt so bad about myself before, not as bad as that. But you, Mr. Hippanthigh, you were the high-falutin' angel with a new brass halo, out on its bank holiday. Now, how would clandestine love-making strike you, Mr. Hippanthigh? Would that be all right to your way of thinking?
HIPPANTHIGH: Clandestine, Mr. Sladder? I hardly understand you.
SLADDER: I understand that you have been making love to my daughter.
HIPPANTHIGH: I admit it.
SLADDER: Well, I haven't heard you say anything about it to me before. Did you tell her mother?
HIPPANTHIGH: Er-no.
SLADDER: Perhaps you told me. Very likely I've forgotten it.
HIPPANTHIGH: No.
SLADDER: Well, who did you tell?
HIPPANTHIGH: We-we hadn't told anyone yet.
SLADDER: Well, I think clandestine's the word for it, Mr. Hippanthigh. I haven't had time in my life to bother about the exact[1] meanings of words or any nonsense of that sort, but I think clandestine's about the word for it.
HIPPANTHIGH: It's a hard word, Mr. Sladder.
SLADDER: May be. And who began using hard words? You came here and made me out a pickpocket, just because I use a few tasty little posters which sell my goods, and all the while you're trying on the sly to take a poor old man's daughter away from him. Well, Mr. Hippanthigh?
HIPPANTHIGH: I-I never looked at it in that light before, Mr. Sladder. I never thought of it in that way. You have made me feel ashamed (he lowers his head), ashamed.
SLADDER: Aha! Aha! I thought I would. Now you know what it's like when you make people ashamed of themselves. You don't like it when they do it to you. Aha! (SLADDER is immensely pleased with himself. )
HIPPANTHIGH: Mr. Sladder, I spoke to you as my conscience demanded, and you have shown me that I have done wrong in not speaking sooner about our engagement. I would have spoken to you, but I could not say that and the other thing in the same day. I meant to tell you soon;-well, I didn't, and I know it looks bad. I've done wrong and I admit it.
SLADDER: Aha! (Still hugely pleased.)
HIPPANTHIGH: But, Mr. Sladder, you would not on that account perhaps spoil your daughter's happiness, and take a terrible revenge on me. You would not withhold your consent to our--
SLADDER: Wait a moment; we're coming to that. There's some bad animal that I've heard of that lives in France, and when folks attack it it defends itself. I've just been defending myself. I think I've shown you that you're no brand-new extra-gilt angel on the top of a spire.
HIPPANTHIGH: O-I-er-never--
SLADDER: Quite so. Well, now we come on to the other part. Very well. Those lords and people, they marry one another's daughters, because they know they're all no good. They're afraid it will get out like, and spread some of their damned mediæval ideas where they'll do harm. So they keep it in the family like. But we people who have had the sense to look after ourselves, we don't throw our daughters away to any young man that can't look after himself. See?
HIPPANTHIGH: I assure you, Mr. Sladder, I should-er--
SLADDER: She's my only daughter, and if any of my grandchildren are going to the work-house, they'll go to one where the master's salary is high, and they'll go there as master.
HIPPANTHIGH: I am aware, Mr. Sladder, that I have very little money; as you would look at it, very little.
SLADDER: It isn't the amount of money you've got as matters. The question is this: are you a young man as money is any good to? If I died and left you a million, would you know what to do with it? I've met men what wouldn't last more than six weeks on a million. Then they'd starve if nobody gave them another million. I'm not going to give my daughter to one of that sort.
HIPPANTHIGH: I was third in the classical tripos at Cambridge, Mr. Sladder.