VANDERGELDER:

What suggestion was that, Mrs. Levi?

MRS. LEVI:

Well—I had found another girl for you.

VANDERGELDER:

Another?

MRS. LEVI:

The most wonderful girl, the ideal wife.

VANDERGELDER:

Another, eh? What’s her name?

MRS. LEVI:

Her name?

VANDERGELDER:

Yes!

MRS. LEVI:

Groping for it.

Err . . . er . . . her name?—Ernestina—Simple. Miss Ernestina Simple. But now of course all that’s too late. After all, you’re engaged—you’re practically engaged to marry Irene Molloy.

VANDERGELDER:

Oh, I ain’t engaged to Mrs. Molloy!

MRS. LEVI:

Nonsense! You can’t break poor Irene’s heart now and change to another girl . . . When a man at your time of life calls four times on an attractive widow like that—and sends her a pot of geraniums—that’s practically an engagement!

VANDERGELDER:

That ain’t an engagement!

MRS. LEVI:

And yet—! If only you were free! I’ve found this treasure of a girl. Every moment I felt like a traitor to Irene Molloy—but let me tell you: I couldn’t help it. I told this girl all about you, just as though you were a free man. Isn’t that dreadful? The fact is: she has fallen in love with you already.

VANDERGELDER:

Ernestina?

MRS. LEVI:

Ernestina Simple.

VANDERGELDER:

Ernestina Simple.

MRS. LEVI:

Of course she’s a very different idea from Mrs. Molloy, Ernestina is. Like her name—simple, domestic, practical.

VANDERGELDER:

Can she cook?

MRS. LEVI:

Cook, Mr. Vandergelder? I’ve had two meals from her hands, and—as I live—I don’t know what I’ve done that God should reward me with such meals.

[The following passage—adapted from a scene in Moliere’s L’Avare—has been cut in recent performances:

MRS. LEVI:

Continues.

Her duck! Her steak!

VANDERGELDER:

Eh! Eh! In this house we don’t eat duck and steak every day, Mrs. Levi.

MRS. LEVI:

But didn’t I tell you?—that’s the wonderful part about it. Her duck—what was it? Pigeon! I’m alive to tell you. I don’t know how she does it. It’s a secret that’s come down in her family. The greatest chefs would give their right hands to know it. And the steaks? Shoulder of beef—four cents a pound. Dogs wouldn’t eat. But when Ernestina passes her hands over it—!!

VANDERGELDER:

Allowing for exaggeration, Mrs. Levi.

MRS. LEVI:

No exaggeration.]

I’m the best cook in the world myself, and I know what’s good.

VANDERGELDER:

Hm. How old is she, Mrs. Levi?

MRS. LEVI:

Nineteen, well—say twenty.

VANDERGELDER:

Twenty, Mrs. Levi? Girls of twenty are apt to favor young fellows of their own age.

MRS. LEVI:

But you don’t listen to me. And you don’t know the girl. Mr. Vandergelder, she has a positive horror of flighty, brainless young men. A fine head of gray hair, she says, is worth twenty shined up with goose grease. No, sir. “I like a man that’s settled”—in so many words she said it.

VANDERGELDER:

That’s . . . that’s not usual, Mrs. Levi.

MRS. LEVI:

Usual? I’m not wearing myself to the bone hunting up usual girls to interest you, Mr. Vandergelder. Usual, indeed. Listen to me. Do you know the sort of pictures she has on her wall? Is it any of these young Romeos and Lochinvars? No!—it’s Moses on the Mountain—that’s what she’s got. If you want to make her happy, you give her a picture of Methuselah surrounded by his grandchildren. That’s my advice to you.