Scene
VIII
Lady Flumm’s Drawing-room. Lady Flumm; Lady Selina; Hon. Mrs. Fubsey.
Mrs. Fubsey
But, my dear sister; how can you so beflatter that poor man? You don’t know all the mischief you may do to him.
Lady Flumm
“Poor man!” I cannot pity him. His maxim is, that knowledge is power; and he thinks his knowledge is all that can be known. He has to learn that our knowledge, also, is power; and that we know how to use it too.
Enter Lord Flumm.
Lord Flumm
There, Lady Selina, so much for your philosophic friend. Poor Turnstile! What a business he has made of it. Here is the Times, with the report of the Shoreditch election meeting. Turnstile has no chance. The Scotchmen coalesce; Highway none of us can think of; and Smooth and MacLeech walk over the ground in triumph; and then, the Presidency of Manufactures, the very appointment for which poor Turnstile was fitted (and, to do the poor devil justice, he could have filled it well), is given to MacLeech, a Scotch hanger on, or distant cousin of Smooth’s, and with the old salary, in spite of all that Hume could say against it.—Bravo! Reform, and the Whigs forever!—We Tories could not have done the business in a better style.
Enter a Footman.
Footman
Mr. Turnstile, my Lady, sends up his card.
Lady Flumm
Oh, not at home! And Sleek, put a memorandum in the visiting-book, that we are “out of town,” whenever Mr. Turnstile calls.