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FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?
SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?
d.i.c.k: (_Maliciously_) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (_Facetiously_) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.
(THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN _looks nervously at his watch. Laughter._)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an a.s.s I am!
SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding.
Name's Haines or Hampton.
d.i.c.k: (_Hurriedly spurring his imagination_) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.
SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my gla.s.s, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.
MAURY: Who? Old Adam?
SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.
d.i.c.k: He's my uncle, Otis.
OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (_Laughter._)
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?
d.i.c.k: Yes, Cable, she is.
CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, d.i.c.ky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.
MAURY: Why are all grooms given the t.i.tle of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.
d.i.c.k: Maury, the professional cynic.
MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.
d.i.c.k: Faker yourself! What do _you_ know?
MAURY: What do _you_ know?
LICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.
MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?
d.i.c.k: You don't know yourself.
MAURY: Don't hedge!
d.i.c.k: Well, natural selection?
MAURY: Wrong.
d.i.c.k: I give it up.
MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!
MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop?
(_Laughter._)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?
MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There _is_ a connection.
d.i.c.k: What is it then?
MAURY: (_Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion_) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!
MAURY: (_Frowning_) Let me just think a minute.
d.i.c.k: (_Sitting up suddenly_) Listen!
(_A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties._)
d.i.c.k: (_Weightily_) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.
OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to G.o.d I'd sent that present.
MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.
OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and----
(_They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCH'S organ_.)
