MAGGIE. It's just that Mr. Venables hasn't the brains to see how good
it is.
JOHN. That must be it. [But he is too good a man to rest satisfied
with this.] No, Maggie, it's not. Somehow I seem to have lost my neat
way of saying things.
MAGGIE [almost cooing]. It will come back to you.
JOHN [forlorn]. If you knew how I've tried.
MAGGIE [cautiously]. Maybe if you were to try again; and I'll just
come and sit beside you, and knit. I think the click of the needles
sometimes put you in the mood.
JOHN. Hardly that; and yet many a Shandism have I knocked off while
you were sitting beside me knitting. I suppose it was the quietness.
MAGGIE. Very likely.
JOHN [with another inspiration]. Maggie!
MAGGIE [again]. What is it, John?
JOHN. What if it was you that put those queer ideas into my head!
MAGGIE. Me?
JOHN. Without your knowing it, I mean.
MAGGIE. But how?
JOHN. We used to talk bits over; and it may be that you dropped the
seed, so to speak.
MAGGIE. John, could it be this, that I sometimes had the idea in a
rough womanish sort of way and then you polished it up till it came
out a Shandism?
JOHN [slowly slapping his knee]. I believe you've hit it, Maggie: to
think that you may have been helping me all the time--and neither of
us knew it!
[He has so nearly reached a smile that no one can say what might have
happened within the next moment if the COMTESSE had not reappeared.
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