DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY
75
DAPHNE
comes in with
CHARLIE BROWN'S
tea.
DAPHNE: Charlie, it's my mother's birthday today. Actually it was
last week but we decided to hold it today. She doesn't look her
age, does she?
CHARLIE B.: No.
(To
CATHERINE) You must a been a nice-looking
woman.
DAPHNE: I've got a present for you in my case, Mother.
CATHERINE: What sort of research are you doing, Leonora?
LEONORA: Assyrian palaeography. I have to be off-–
CATHERINE: But that was my subject.
It
was my subject.
LEONORA: You didn't exhaust it. I've been doing this for two years,
I'm writing a short book - only a monograph.
CATHERINE: I don't see why you can't stick to Greek. I don't see why
you want to dabble in my subject.
Exit
LEONORA.
I'll leave you to look after Charlie. I've got nothing done this
morning. Perhaps Charlie needs to be off, if he's had his tea.
CHARLIE B.: No, I'm not in any hurry. Plenty time.
MRS.
S.
comes in.
MRS. S.: You go and unpack your things, Daphne.
DAPHNE: Thanks for the lift, Charlie, anyhow.
(Exit.)
MRS. S.: You finished your tea?
CHARLIE B. : Yes thanks.
MRS. S.: Well I better clear away, then. It's gone twelve - I sup–
pose you want to be off.
CHARLIE B.: No, I'm in no hurry.
If
it isn't your own time you
!night as well relax. Lot a books. Have they read them all?
MRS. S.: They don't use them for reading, they are educated people,
they refer to them. You better get off. The old father !night come
in and find you.
CHARLIE B.: Oh, I'm used to that. Funny sort of guest house, this.
MRS S.: 'This is the home, situated near Regent's Park, of the
celebrated economist, Charles Delfont and his charming wife and
daughter who is at present doing a post-graduate course in sociology
at Oxford. Mrs. Delfont, before her marriage a scholar
in
her own
right, told
Life and Looks
that she has found it perfectly easy to
reconcile her capacity for intellectualism with the duties of wife and
mother. "After all," she said with a serene sInile, "higher education
