PROSERPINE. City dinner. You're invited to dine with the
Founder's Company.

MORELL. That'll do; I'll go to the Hoxton Group of Freedom
instead. (She enters the engagement in silence, with implacable
disparagement of the Hoxton Anarchists in every line of her face.
Morell bursts open the cover of a copy of The Church Reformer,
which has come by post, and glances through Mr. Stewart Hendlam's
leader and the Guild of St. Matthew news. These proceedings are
presently enlivened by the appearance of Morell's curate, the
Reverend Alexander Mill, a young gentleman gathered by Morell
from the nearest University settlement, whither he had come from
Oxford to give the east end of London the benefit of his
university training. He is a conceitedly well intentioned,
enthusiastic, immature person, with nothing positively unbearable
about him except a habit of speaking with his lips carefully
closed for half an inch from each corner, a finicking
arthulation, and a set of horribly corrupt vowels, notably ow for
o, this being his chief means of bringing Oxford refinement
to bear on Hackney vulgarity. Morell, whom he has won over by a
doglike devotion, looks up indulgently from The Church Reformer
as he enters, and remarks) Well, Lexy! Late again, as usual.

LEXY. I'm afraid so. I wish I could get up in the morning.

MORELL (exulting in his own energy). Ha! ha! (Whimsically.) Watch
and pray, Lexy: watch and pray.

LEXY. I know. (Rising wittily to the occasion.) But how can I