r all, I might have foreseen that you'd come out on top.
The day before yesterday your modesty was making you say that your
mother could eat you. I, on the contrary, insisted that you could eat
your mother. Who was right? I ask: who was right? When it really comes
to the point--well, you have a serious talk with your mother, and she
gives in!

HILDEGARDE (_gloomily_). No! _I_ didn't do it. I tried, and failed. Then
Johnnie tried, and did it without the slightest trouble. A schoolboy!
That's why I'm so upset.

TRANTO (_shaking his head_). You musn't tell me that, Miss Hilda. Of
course it was you that did it.

HILDEGARDE (_impatiently; standing up_). But I _do_ tell you.

TRANTO. Sorry! Sorry! Do be merciful! My feelings about you at this very
moment are so, if I may use the term, unbridled--

HILDEGARDE (_with false
gentle calm_). And that's not all. I suppose you haven't by any chance
told father that I'm Sampson Straight?

TRANTO. Certainly not.

HILDEGARDE. You're sure?

TRANTO. Absolutely.

HILDEGARDE. Well, I'm sorry.

TRANTO. Why?

HILDEGARDE (_quietly sarcastic_). Because papa told me you did tell him.
Therefore father is a liar. I don't like being the daughter of a liar. I
hate liars.

TRANTO. Aren't you rather cutting yourself off from mankind?

HILDEGARDE (_going straight on_). For the last day or two father had
been giving me such queer little digs every now and then that I began to
suspect he knew who Sampson Straight was. So I asked him right out this
morning--he was in bed--and he had to acknowledge he did know and that
you told him.

TRANTO. Well, I didn't exactly tell him. He sort of guessed, and
I--

HILDEGARDE (_calmly, relentlessly_). You told him.

TRANTO. No. I merely admitted it. You think I ought to have denied it?

HILDEGARDE. Of course you ought to have denied it.

TRANTO. But it was true.

HILDEGARDE. And if it was?

TRANTO. If it was true, how could I deny it? You've just said you hate
liars.

HILDEGARDE (_losing self-control_). Please don't be absurd.

TRANTO (_a little nettled_). I apologise.

HILDEGARDE. What for?

TRANTO. For having put you in the wrong. It's such shocking bad
diplomacy for any man to put any woman in the wrong.

HILDEGARDE (_angrily_). Man--woman! Man--woman! There you are! It's
always the same with you males. Sex! Sex! Sex!

TRANTO (_quite conquering his annoyance; persuasively_). But I'm fatally
in love with you. HILDEGARDE. Well, of