Dick: Well, natural selection?

Maury: Wrong.

Dick: I give it up.

Maury: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.

Fifth Young Man: Take your base!

Maury: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (Laughter.)

Fourth Young Man: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?

Maury: Shut up, you saphead. There is a connection.

Dick: What is it then?

Maury: (Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.

Fourth Young Man: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!

Maury: (Frowning) Let me just think a minute.

Dick: (Sitting up suddenly) Listen!

(A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.)

Dick: (Weightily) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.

Otis: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.

Fourth Young Man: I wish to God I'd sent that present.

Maury: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.

Otis: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and——