DES. We only cut respectable capers.

DES. I've given up all my wild proceedings.
MAR. My taste for a wandering life is waning.
DES. Now I'm a dab at penny readings.
MAR. They are not remarkably entertaining.
DES. A moderate livelihood we're gaining.
MAR. In fact we rule
A National School.
DES. The duties are dull, but I'm not complaining.
(Dance.)

This sort of thing takes a deal of training!

DES. We have been married a week.
MAR. One happy, happy week!
DES. Our new life--
MAR. Is delightful indeed!
DES. So calm!
MAR. So unimpassioned! (Wildly). Master, all this I owe
to you! See, I am no longer wild and untidy. My hair is combed.
My face is washed. My boots fit!
DES. Margaret, don't. Pray restrain yourself. Remember,
you are now a district visitor.
MAR. A gentle district visitor!
DES. You are orderly, methodical, neat; you have your
emotions well under control.
MAR. I have! (Wildly). Master, when I think of all you
have done for me, I fall at your feet. I embrace your ankles. I
hug your knees! (Doing so.)
DES. Hush. This is not well. This is calculated to
provoke remark. Be composed, I beg!
MAR. Ah! you are angry with poor little Mad Margaret!
DES. No, not angry; but a district visitor should learn to
eschew melodrama. Visit the poor, by all means, and give them
tea and barley-water, but don't do it as if you were
administering a bowl of deadly nightshade. It upsets them. Then
when you nurse sick people, and find them not as well as could be
expected, why go into hysterics?
MAR. Why not?
DES. Because it's too jumpy for a sick-room.
MAR. How strange! Oh, Master! Master!--how shall I express
the all-absorbing gratitude that--(about to throw herself at his
feet).
DES. Now! (Warningly).
MAR. Yes, I know, dear--it shan't occur again. (He is
seated--she sits on the ground by him.) Shall I tell you one of
poor Mad Margaret's odd thoughts? Well, then, when I am lying
awake at night, and the pale moonlight streams through the
latticed casement, strange fancies crowd upon my poor mad brain,
and I sometimes think that if we could hit upon some