TROTTER. I'm getting the worst of this.

FANNY. Oh no. Why do you say that?

TROTTER. May I remind you that the dinner-bell will ring presently?

FANNY. What does it matter? We're both ready. I havnt told you yet
what I want you to do for me.

TROTTER. Nor have you particularly predisposed me to do it, except
out of pure magnanimity. What is it?

FANNY. I dont mind this play shocking my father morally. It's good
for him to be shocked morally. It's all that the young can do for the
old, to shock them and keep them up to date. But I know that this
play will shock him artistically; and that terrifies me. No moral
consideration could make a breach between us: he would forgive me for
anything of that kind sooner or later; but he never gives way on a
point of art. I darent let him know that I love Beethoven and Wagner;
and as to Strauss, if he heard three bars of Elektra, it'd part us for
ever. Now what I want you to do is this. If hes very angry--if he
hates the play, because it's a modern play--will you tell him that
it's not my fault; that its style and construction, and so forth, are
considered the very highest art nowadays; that the author wrote it in
the proper way for repertory theatres of the most superior kind--you
know the kind of plays I mean?

TROTTER. [emphatically] I think I know the sort of entertainments
you mean. But please do not beg a vital question by calling them
plays. I dont pretend to be an authority; but I have at least