matchmaking: you would be taken in by some pretty little nobody.
Of course I don't mean that you are not to be consulted: you know
that as well as I do. [Stephen closes his lips and is silent].
Now don't sulk, Stephen.

STEPHEN. I am not sulking, mother. What has all this got to do
with--with--with my father?

LADY BRITOMART. My dear Stephen: where is the money to come from?
It is easy enough for you and the other children to live on my
income as long as we are in the same house; but I can't keep four
families in four separate houses. You know how poor my father is:
he has barely seven thousand a year now; and really, if he were
not the Earl of Stevenage, he would have to give up society. He
can do nothing for us: he says, naturally enough, that it is
absurd that he should be asked to provide for the children of a
man who is rolling in money. You see, Stephen, your father must
be fabulously wealthy, because there is always a war going on
somewhere.

STEPHEN. You need not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly
ever opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it.
The Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The
Undershaft ten inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the
Undershaft submarine! and now the Undershaft aerial battleship!
At Harrow they called me the Woolwich Infant. At Cambridge it was
the same. A little brute at King's who was always trying to get
up revivals, spoilt my Bible--your first birthday present to me--
by writing under my name, "Son and heir to Undershaft and
Lazarus, Death and Destruction Dealers: address, Christendom and