LADY CAROLINE. Let me hold the darling match.

MATEY. Tidy-looking Petitey Corona, this. There was a time when one of
that sort would have run away with two days of my screw.

LADY CAROLINE. How I should have loved, Jim, to know you when you were
poor. Fancy your having once been a clerk.

MATEY (remembering Napoleon and others). We all have our beginnings.
But it wouldn't have mattered how I began, Caroliny: I should have
come to the top just the same. (Becoming a poet himself.) I am a
climber and there are nails in my boots for the parties beneath me.
Boots! I tell you if I had been a bootmaker, I should have been the
first bootmaker in London.

LADY CAROLINE (a humourist at last). I am sure you would, Jim; but
should you have made the best boots?

MATEY (uxoriously wishing that others could have heard this). Very
good. Caroliny; that is the nearest thing I have heard you say. But
it's late; we had best be strolling back to our Rolls-Royce.

LADY CAROLINE (as they rise). I do hope the ground wasn't damp.

MATEY. Don't matter if it was; I was lying on your rug.

(Indeed we notice now that he has had all the rug, and she the bare
ground. JOANNA reaches the glade, now an unhappy lady who has got
what she wanted. She is in country dress and is unknown to them as
they are to her.) Who is the mournful party?