MRs.  Lunn.  Serve you right!  You’d think it quite proper if it cut me to the soul.

Mrs. Juno.  Am I to take Sibthorpe off your hands too, Mrs. Lunn?

Juno [rising] Do you suppose I’ll allow this?

Mrs. Juno.  You’ve admitted that you’ve done wrong, Tops.  What’s the use of your allowing or not allowing after that?

Juno.  I do not admit that I have done wrong.  I admit that what I did was wrong.

Gregory.  Can you explain the distinction?

Juno.  It’s quite plain to anyone but an imbecile.  If you tell me I’ve done something wrong you insult me.  But if you say that something that I did is wrong you simply raise a question of morals.  I tell you flatly if you say I did anything wrong you will have to fight me.  In fact I think we ought to fight anyhow.  I don’t particularly want to; but I feel that England expects us to.

Gregory.  I won’t fight.  If you beat me my wife would share my humiliation.  If I beat you, she would sympathize with you and loathe me for my brutality.

Mrs. Lunn.  Not to mention that as we are human beings and not reindeer or barndoor fowl, if two men presumed to fight for us we couldn’t decently ever speak to either of them again.

Gregory.  Besides, neither of us could beat the other, as we neither of us know how to fight.  We should only blacken each other’s eyes and make fools of ourselves.

Juno.  I don’t admit that.  Every Englishman can use his fists.

Gregory.  You’re an Englishman.  Can you use yours?

Juno.  I presume so:  I never tried.

Mrs. Juno.  You never told me you couldn’t fight, Tops.  I thought you were an accomplished boxer.

Juno.  My precious:  I never gave you any ground for such a belief.

Mrs. Juno.  You always talked as if it were a matter of course.  You spoke with the greatest contempt of men who didn’t kick other men downstairs.

Juno.  Well, I can’t kick Mr. Lunn downstairs.  We’re on the ground floor.

Mrs. Juno.  You could throw him into the harbor.

Gregory.  Do you want me to be thrown into the harbor?

Mrs. Juno.  No:  I only want to show Tops that he’s making a ghastly fool of himself.

Gregory [rising and prowling disgustedly between the chesterfield and the windows] We’re all making fools of ourselves.

Juno [following him] Well, if we’re not to fight, I must insist at least on your never speaking to my wife again.

Gregory.  Does my speaking to your wife do you any harm?

Juno.  No.  But it’s the proper course to take. [Emphatically].  We must behave with some sort of decency.

Mrs. Lunn.  And are you never going to speak to me again, Mr. Juno?