and over DAVID'S mouth_]
Don't! You make me ill! How could you ever bear it?

DAVID [_Smiling_]
I was quite happy--I only had to fancy I'd been shipwrecked, and that
after clinging to a plank five days without food or water on the great
lonely Atlantic, my frozen, sodden form had been picked up by this great
safe steamer and given this delightful dry berth, regular meals, and the
spectacle of all these friendly faces.... Do you know who was on board
that boat? Quincy Davenport.

MENDEL
The lord of corn and oil?

DAVID [_Smiling_]
Yes, even we wretches in the steerage felt safe to think the lord was up
above, we believed the company would never dare drown _him_. But could
even Quincy Davenport command a cabin like this?
[_Waving his arm round the room._]
Why, uncle, we have a cabin worth a thousand dollars--a thousand dollars
a _week_--and what's more, it doesn't wobble!
[_He plants his feet voluptuously upon the floor._]

MENDEL
Come, come, David, I asked you to be serious. Surely, some day you'd
like your music produced?

DAVID [_Jumps up_]
Wouldn't it be glorious? To hear it all actually coming out of violins
and 'cellos, drums and trumpets.

MENDEL
And you'd like it to go all over the world?

DAVID
All over the world and all down the ages.

MENDEL
But don't you see that unless you go and study seriously in Germany----?
[_Enter KATHLEEN from kitchen, carrying a furnished tea-tray with
ear-shaped cakes, bread and butter, etc., and wearing a grotesque
false nose. MENDEL cries out in amaze._]
Kathleen!

DAVID [_Roaring with boyish laughter_]
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

KATHLEEN [_Standing still with her tray_]
Sure, what's the matter?

DAVID
Look in the glass!

KATHLEEN [_Going to the mantel_]
Houly Moses!
[_She drops the tray, which MENDEL catches, and snatches off the
nose._]
Och, I forgot to take it off--'twas the misthress gave it me--I put it
on to cheer her up.

DAVID
Is she so miserable, then?

KATHLEEN
Terrible low, Mr. David, to-day being _Purim_.

MENDEL
_Purim!_ Is to-day _Purim_?
[_Gives her the tea-tray back. KATHLEEN, to take it, drops her
nose and forgets to pick it up._]

DAVID
But _Purim_ is a merry time, Kathleen, like your Carnival. Haven't you
read the book of Esther--how the Jews of Persia escaped massacre?

KATHLEEN
That's what the misthress is so miserable about. Ye don't _keep_ the
Carnival. There's noses for both of ye