Wives and Daughters

[to Mr. Preston]

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
I didn't sell myself. I liked you then, but oh, do I hate you now!

Lord Cumnor:
I'm sorry I said anything about it now. I'll try to find a more agreeable piece of news. [pause] Old Marjorie at the lodge is dead.

Roger Hamley:
[Roger to Molly] Do you like my sermons? Have they given you an appetite for lunch? Come... I do know what you must be feeling. You must've thought I was very hard on you. I'm not very good at expressing myself, somehow I always fall into philosophizing. But I do feel very sorry for you, and I shall often be thinking of you.

Squire Hamley:
Well, I must go and dress. Madam wouldn't like me to come in like this. She's broken me in to her fine London ways and I'm all the better for it, I daresay.

Molly Gibson:
[on hearing of her father's engagement] So that's why I was sent away, was it? So all this could be arranged in my absence?

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
In short, Mama, the one man may steal a horse - the other musn't look over the hedge?

Claire Gibson:
Oh, do be quiet child! All proverbs are vulgar, and I do believe that is the vulgarist of them all! I really think you're catching Roger Hamley's coarseness, Cynthia.

Roger Hamley:
How are you, was it a very trying day? I thought about you, more than once.

Molly Gibson:
Thank you, I did try to remember what you said and to think more of all this, but you know it's so difficult.

Roger Hamley:
I know, but you know you'll be happier for it by and by.

Molly Gibson:
No, I shan't, and if I'm to kill myself as it were trying to think and behave as other people want me to I feel I might as well never have lived. And as for the happiness you speak of, well I shall never be happy again!

Molly Gibson:
Must I call her mama?

Claire Gibson:
I'm sure you will acknowledge that an engagement is an engagement.

Squire Hamley:
Did I say an engagement was an elephant ma'am?

Roger Hamley:
But Cynthia's eyes are perfection. I often tried to find something in nature to compare them to...

Osborne Hamely:
No come on, you can't go trying to match her eyes like a draper.

Mr. Gibson:
Mr Coxe, I have a prescription for you.

Mr. Coxe:
Beg pardon sir?

Mr. Gibson:
Three ounces of modesty, two ounces of duty, a pinch of deference taken three times a day in aqua pura. That should cool the passion which I believe runs in your veins.

Osborne Hamely:
You see it's hopeless. How can I tell him I'm married to a French woman who was a nursery maid.

Squire Hamley:
I'm not saying she was very silly, but one of us was silly and it wasn't me.

Miss Phoebe:
Fancy anyone wanting to write a book about beetles, or read one for that matter.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
In my experience, if you're a good girl and suffer yourself to be led you will find your stepmother the sweetest creature imaginable. I never managed it but you might.

Mr. Gibson:
Where's the new mama?

Roger Hamley:
Mr. Preston, perhaps you should remember the deference you should show to a man of my father's age and position. Good day to you!

Lady Cumnor:
Weally Hawiet, I cannot understand why you take such an intewest in these petty Hollingford affairs.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
Oh mama, it's only tit for tat. They take the keenest interest in ours.

Lady Cumnor:
I wonder what Claire could be doing to allow such goings on.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
That was a good day's work I think.

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
I do think life is very dreary.

Lady Cumnor:
Now Claire, when I think a thing I say it out loud. I don't beat about the bush. You have spoiled that girl of yours until she does not know her own mind. She has behaved abominably to Mr Pweston and it is all due to the faults in her education. You have much to answer for.

Claire Gibson:
Cynthia... and Mr Preston?

Lady Cumnor:
Claire! Do you mean to tell me you don't know. Your daughter has been engaged to Mr Pweston for some time. Years I believe. And has now decided to break it off. To be a "jilting jessie" as we used to call it.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
Mr Preston did not want it spoken of.

Lady Cumnor:
She has used the Gibson girl as a cat's paw and made her and herself the butt of all the gossip in Hollingford.

Mr. Gibson:
Is this true Cynthia?

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
Molly knows it all.

Mr. Gibson:
Yes, I know that and that she has had to endure gossip and slander for your sake. But more she refused to tell me.

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
Oh, she told you that much did she?

Molly Gibson:
I couldn't help it.

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
Why did you have to say anything at all?

Mr. Gibson:
Because her reputation was attacked for your misconduct and I demanded an explanation.

Molly Gibson:
I do so hate having these underhand dealings with him.

Miss Phoebe:
Oh sister, Molly Gibson has lost her character and it is Mr Preston after all!

Lord Cumnor:
How much is twice eighteen? Thirty?

Lady Cumnor:
Thirty six.

Lord Cumnor:
Ah! So, Molly Gibson is to marry Mr Preston.

Lady Cumnor:
Is she indeed?

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
Are you sure you've got it right Papa?

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
The French girls would tell you to believe that you are pretty would make you so.

Claire Gibson:
Don't be angry dear, for a minute there I thought you were going to lose your temper.

Mr. Gibson:
It would have been of no use.

Roger Hamley:
[Roger's letter to Cynthia] It is sundown Cynthia. They are singing outside my tent. The men say it's about a chap who pines for a girl in a distant land. They are teasing me of course - they often do.

Lord Cumnor:
I say, steady on Harriet!

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
And would you reply to him for I shant have time?

Molly Gibson:
And shall I say you'll write as soon as you get to London?

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
Of course. Well, once I've settled in. Anyway Molly, you'd write him a much better letter than I would.

Molly Gibson:
Cynthia, he wants to hear from you.

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
Does he? Oh, I suppose he does.

Claire Gibson:
Molly, did you know you were just dancing with the man who keeps Grinstead's bookshop?

Molly Gibson:
Oh, that accounts for him knowing all about the latest books.

Mr. Gibson:
Content yourself my dear. Roger Hamley is as fine as young man as ever breathed, with money or without. I only wish my Molly could meet with such another.

Claire Gibson:
I will try for Molly.

Mr. Gibson:
No, no, no, no, no. That is one thing I forbid. I will have no *trying* for Molly.

Mrs. Goodenough:
Is *that* the duchess? *That* palsy thing? Well! Where are her diamonds? Here am I sitting up and coal and candlelight wasting at home and in comes a duchess wearing a- pfff. Farmer Hodson's daughter's got a dress smarter than that.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
Here we are at last. Aren't we shamefully late? It was the duchess! That ill-mannered woman kept us all waiting and then appeared ? l'enfant as you see her.

Claire Gibson:
Molly, I cannot have you speaking so to Lady Harriet and do stop putting yourself into her conversations.

Molly Gibson:
I can't help it if she asks me questions.

Claire Gibson:
I don't know what you mean by proximate.

Mr. Gibson:
Well go into the surgery and look it up then.

Miss Browning:
Two letters in a week is quite acceptable but at 11 ha'penny postage any more would be extravagant.

Molly Gibson:
Papa, how can you waste one of our precious evenings? We have only six evenings and I reckoned on us doing all sorts of things.

Mr. Gibson:
What sorts of things?

Molly Gibson:
Oh I don't know, everything that's ungenteel and unrefined.

Mr. Gibson:
By toil and labour I've reached the fair height of refinement and I won't be pulled down again.

Molly Gibson:
Oh yes you will for a week.

Mr. Gibson:
If you want us to sympathise Hyacinth, you'll have to tell us what the matter is.

Molly Gibson:
I don't think you should mention it to Lady Cumnor, Mama.

Claire Gibson:
Molly dear, I know you mean well but don't let one walk into town with Lady Harriet go to your head. I think I'm well capable to decide what I should or shouldn't say to Lady Cumnor.

Squire Hamley:
[to Mr. Gibson] "Your wife and I didn't hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I'm not saying she was very silly, but one of us was very silly, and it wasn't me."

Miss Phoebe:
We always knew Roger Hamley loved our Molly.

Miss Browning:
We knew no such thing, Phoebe.

Miss Phoebe:
Well, he rode seven miles to bring her a wasp's nest and you don't do that for no reason!

Molly Gibson:
You've never vexed me in my whole life, Roger.

Squire Hamley:
I understand a deal more than you think I understand.

Roger Hamley:
May I come to the house?

Mr. Gibson:
I won't run the risk of infection if you don't mind.

Roger Hamley:
Then I won't see Molly before I leave.

Mr. Gibson:
Oh. So that's how it is.

Squire Hamley:
Here's the young master.

Lady Cumnor:
Quite a credit to his mother.

Aim?e:
I think Roger likes you very much.

Molly Gibson:
There was a time we used to be like brother and sister.

Aim?e:
No. I don't think so.

Molly Gibson:
It's the one you did a drawing of.

Roger Hamley:
You remember?

Molly Gibson:
Of course I remember. I remember everything you wrote in your letters. How could you think I wouldn't?

Mr. Gibson:
You're becoming a very surprising young woman.

Squire Hamley:
Where's that little chap of mine?

Lady Cumnor:
Although there is a general pwejudice against attorneys it may be that your Mr... Henderson is an exception.

Molly Gibson:
Cynthia, don't. Your husband this morning and mine tonight? What do you take him for?

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
A man.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
You men concern yourselves with the eternal verities. We women are content to ponder the petty things in life.

Squire Hamley:
Ya know I think it was a strange thing how both you boys picked out girls below you in rank and family, yet neither of you set your fancies on little Molly Gibson. Now there's a lassie who's found her way into my heart.

Roger Hamley:
Molly's like a sister to me.

Roger Hamley:
[Roger to his father] It wasn't really her I loved, I think. A notion of her I dreamed up myself. A kind of hypothetical Cynthia that never was.

Squire Hamley:
I don't see why you don't put up for her still. Don't you think you could like her if you tried?

Roger Hamley:
No need for trying to love her, that's already done. But it's too late, it's too late, she's as good as told me so - it's my own fault!

Molly Gibson:
[Molly to Roger when she sees him for the first time since his return home from Africa] I wondered if I'd recognize you. Papa said you had a beard.

Roger Hamley:
Oh, no, no I don't.

Dinner guest:
[at the dinner table at The Towers] Mr. Hamley, were the natives not dangerous? One hears such stories, do they really eat each other?

Roger Hamley:
Only rarely. The flesh of the European is considered the real delicacy - especially the female!

Mr. Gibson:
Women are queer, unreasoning creatures and just as likely as not to love a man who's been throwing his affection away.

Roger Hamley:
Thank you sir, I see you mean to give me encouragement.

Mr. Gibson:
My encouragement is neither here nor there, for if she can stomach ya, I dare say I can.

[the scene in the rain]

Roger Hamley:
I couldn't go. I couldn't go without... Molly, do I still have any chance with you?

Molly Gibson:
Yes.

Roger Hamley:
I've been such a fool I know - yes?

Molly Gibson:
Yes!

Roger Hamley:
I had so much I'd prepared to say to you. I should have seen that it was you that I truly loved even before - d'you mean it?

Molly Gibson:
Yes!

Roger Hamley:
I musn't come any closer, I promised your Father.

Molly Gibson:
Yes, I know!

Roger Hamley:
Molly, dear Molly, will you be my wife?

Molly Gibson:
Yes! Yes I will, Yes!

Roger Hamley:
A man learns what he needs to know.

Claire Gibson:
Riches are a great snare you know.

Mr. Gibson:
Be thankful you're spared temptation, my dear.

Mr. Gibson:
[Mr. Gibson to Roger] Lover versus Father, lover wins.

Claire Gibson:
I can't help but think it was such a pity I was born when I was. I should like to belong to this generation.

Molly Gibson:
He gave me a wasps nest as a present once.

Lord Hollingford:
Do you know our guest of honour?

Molly Gibson:
Yes, he's a very old friend.

Lord Hollingford:
Is he very awe-inspiring?

Molly Gibson:
No, not at all. He's very kind and not at all like anyone I know, he gave me a wasps nest as a present once.

Mrs. Goodenough:
I'd hoped to see her dressed a bit grander now she's a fine lady and mistress of Hamley Hall.

Roger Hamley:
My father's very angry with you.

Molly Gibson:
Angry with me?

Roger Hamley:
Only because you came here instead of to us at Hamley.

Molly Gibson:
Well Lady Harriet wanted me and I don't know why but there's no refusing her.

Squire Hamley:
So you've come a-visiting though you've been up with the grand folks. We thought you were going to cut us Miss Molly.

Molly Gibson:
They asked me and I went, now you've asked me and I've come here.

Squire Hamley:
And which do you prefer.

Molly Gibson:
I don't think I should answer that.

Squire Hamley:
He's a proper hand, he is.

Roger Hamley:
Molly, it's the stuff I had sent home from Africa, it's just arrived. I thought you'd be interested.

Molly Gibson:
I am interested.

Roger Hamley:
Well come on then.

Roger Hamley:
Your letters meant so much to me when I was in Africa. I think you took greater pains over them than Cynthia did with hers. It's alright Molly, I can speak about her. It's over. For me as well.

Aim?e:
I think Roger likes you very much.

Molly Gibson:
There was a time we were like brother and sister.

Aim?e:
No. I don't think so.

Molly Gibson:
You don't understand, he was engaged to my sister, my step-sister.

Aim?e:
He made a mistake I think.

Roger Hamley:
Then may I come to the house? Just once?

Mr. Gibson:
No definitely not and there I come in as a doctor as well as a father. No.

Roger Hamley:
Then if I don't come back I shall haunt you for having been so cruel.

Mr. Gibson:
Come, I like that. Give me a wise man of science in love. No-one to beat him for folly.

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
[dismissing her fianc?] I want to talk to Molly now, not you. [to Molly] What do you think?

Molly Gibson:
Do you like him enough to marry him?

Cynthia Kirkpatrick:
I do. At least, I think I do. I told him I wasn't very constant but he says he likes me the way I am. So you see he has been fairly warned. I think he is a little afraid though, he wants us to be married very soon.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
How do you think my little prot?g?e is getting on, Mr Hamley?

Roger Hamley:
Very well. She seems exactly the same and yet somehow completely different.

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
Good.

Roger Hamley:
[looking grave] Who is the gentleman with her?

Lady Harriet Cumnor:
My cousin, Sir Charles Morton.

Roger Hamley:
Oh. I see.

Roger Hamley:
Sir Charles Morton. Have you known him long?

Molly Gibson:
No, not long at all. Lady Harriet asked him to take care of me and he does whatever she asks him.