Part I — Scene 4

Question 1

START OF SCENE

Answer 1

“Our last meeting which fell on July Fourteenth——”

Question 2

MRS. BASSETT. Bastille Day!

Answer 2

Pardon me?

Question 3

MRS. BASSETT. It fell on Bastille Day! But, honey, that was the meeting before last.

Answer 3

You’re perfectly right. I seem to be on the wrong page———

Question 4

MRS. BASSETT. Butter-fingers?

Answer 4

Thank you, Roger—Vernon. Here we are! July twenty-fifth! Correct?

Question 5

MRS. BASSETT. Correct!

Answer 5

“It was debated whether or not we ought to suspend operations for the remainder of the summer, as the departure of several members engaged in the teaching profession for their summer vacations———”

Question 6

MRS. BASSETT. Lucky people!

Answer 6

“—had substantially contracted our little circle.”

Question 7

MRS. BASSETT. —“Decimated our ranks!”

Answer 7

Is that—is that—the doorbell?

Question 8

MRS. BASSETT. It sure did sound like it to me.

Answer 8

Excuse me a moment. I think it may be———Yes, it is—our guest of honor! Everybody, this is Dr. John Buchanan, Jr.

Question 9

JOHN. Did I miss much?

Answer 9

Not a thing! Just the minutes—I’ll put you on the love-seat. Next to me. We mustn’t crush this lovely garment. Well, now! We are completely assembled!

Question 10

MRS. BASSETT. Vernon has his verse play with him tonight!

Answer 10

Is that right, Vernon?

Question 11

MRS. BASSETT. Those dead poets can keep!

Answer 11

Mrs. Bassett, everybody! This is the way I feel about the verse play. It’s too important a thing to read under any but ideal circumstances. Not only atmospheric—on some cool evening with music planned to go with it! —But everyone present so that nobody will miss it! Why don’t we———?

Question 12

ROGER. Why don’t we take a standing vote on the matter?

Answer 12

Good, good, perfect!

Question 13

ROGER. Now, Mrs. Bassett, no rough tactics, please!

Answer 13

Has everybody got fans? John, you haven’t got one!

Question 14

MRS. BASSETT. This is a free country, I can speak my opinion. And I have read up on him. Go on, Rosemary. I wasn’t criticizing your paper.

Answer 14

Mrs. Bassett is only joking, Rosemary.

Question 15

ROGER. I never heard that about him.

Answer 15

Mrs. Bassett is mistaken about that. Mrs. Bassett, you have confused Blake with someone else.

Question 16

MRS. BASSETT. That’s where it happened, fired a gun at him in a drunken stupor, and later one of them died of T.B. in the gutter! All right. I’m finished. I won’t say anything more. Go on with your paper, Rosemary. There’s nothing like contact with culture!

Answer 16

Before Rosemary reads her paper on Blake, I think it would be a good idea, since some of us aren’t acquainted with his work, to preface the critical and biographical comments with a reading of one of his loveliest lyric poems.

Question 17

ROSEMARY. I’m not going to read anything at all! Not I!

Answer 17

Then let me read it, then… This is called “Love’s Secret.”

Question 18

ALMA. Then let me read it, then… This is called “Love’s Secret.”

Answer 18

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be,
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

Question 19

ALMA. Silently, invisibly.

Answer 19

I told my love, I told my love,
I told him all my heart.
Trembling, cold in ghastly fear
Did my love depart.

Question 20

ALMA. Did my love depart.

Answer 20

No sooner had he gone from me
Than a stranger passing by,
Silently, invisibly,
Took him with a sigh!

Question 21

MRS. BASSETT. Honey, you’re right. That isn’t the man I meant. I was thinking about the one who wrote about “the bought red lips.” Who was it that wrote about the “bought red lips”?

Answer 21

John!

Question 22

JOHN. I have to call on a patient!

Answer 22

Oh, John!

Question 23

MRS. BASSETT. No supercilious comments out of you, sir! Go on, Rosemary. She has such as beautiful voice!

Answer 23

Please excuse the interruption, Rosemary. Dr. Buchanan had to call on a patient.

Question 24

MRS. BASSETT. I bet I know who the patient was! Ha-ha! That Zacharias girl whose father own Moon Lake Casino and goes everywhere with a pistol strapped on his belt. Johnny Buchanan will get himself shot in that crowd!

Answer 24

Why, Mrs. Bassett, what gave you such an idea? I don’t think that John even knows that Zacharias girl!

Question 25

MRS. BASSETT. He knows her, all right. In the Biblical sense of the word, if you’ll excuse me!

Answer 25

No, I will not excuse you! A thing like that is inexcusable!

Question 26

MRS. BASSETT. Have you fallen for him, Miss Alma? Miss Alma has fallen for the young doctor! They tell me he has lots of new lady patients!

Answer 26

Stop it! I won’t have malicious talk here! You drove him away from the meeting after I’d bragged so much about how bright and interesting you all were! You put your worst foot forward and simpered and chattered and carried on like idiots, idiots! What am I saying? I—I—please excuse me!