made
Miss Dunn throw her cards on the table, you cannot refuse to show your
own.

MRS HUSHABYE. Come, Alf! out with it! How much?

MANGAN [baited out of all prudence]. Well, if you want to know, I have
no money and never had any.

MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, you mustn't tell naughty stories.

MANGAN. I'm not telling you stories. I'm telling you the raw truth.

LADY UTTERWORD. Then what do you live on, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN. Travelling expenses. And a trifle of commission.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What more have any of us but travelling expenses for
our life's journey?

MRS HUSHABYE. But you have factories and capital and things?

MANGAN. People think I have. People think I'm an industrial Napoleon.
That's why Miss Ellie wants to marry me. But I tell you I have nothing.

ELLIE. Do you mean that the factories are like Marcus's tigers? That
they don't exist?

MANGAN. They exist all right enough. But they're not mine. They belong
to syndicates and shareholders and all sorts of lazy good-for-nothing
capitalists. I get money from such people to start the factories. I find
people like Miss Dunn's father to work them, and keep a tight hand so as
to make them pay. Of course I make them keep me going pretty well; but
it's a dog's life; and I don't own anything.

MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, Alfred, you are making a poor mouth of it to get
out of marrying Ellie.

MANGAN. I'm telling the truth about my money for the first time in my
life; and it's the first time my word has ever been doubted.

LADY UTTERWORD. How sad! Why don't you go in for politics, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN. Go in for politics! Where have you been living? I am in
politics.

LADY UTTERWORD. I'm sure I beg your pardon. I never heard of you.

MANGAN. Let me tell you, Lady Utterword, that the Prime Minister of this
country asked me to join the Government without even going through the
nonsense of an election, as the dictator of a great public department.

LADY UTTERWORD. As a Conservative or a Liberal?

MANGAN. No such nonsense. As a practical business man. [They all burst
out laughing]. What are you all laughing at?

MRS HUSHARYE. Oh, Alfred, Alfred!

ELLIE. You! who have to get my father to do everything for you!

MRS HUSHABYE. You! who are afraid of your own workmen!

HECTOR. You! with whom three women have been playing cat and mouse all
the evening!

LADY UTTERWORD. You must have given an immense sum to the party funds,
Mr Mangan.

MANGAN. Not a penny out of