Love Among the Ruins

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: And what is your age?

Jessica Medlicott: [smiling, nervous and not speaking for several seconds]

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: Did you not hear the question that I asked?

Jessica Medlicott: I heard your question. I could not believe that you asked it.

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: Don't you want the jury to know how old you are?

Jessica Medlicott: I cannot think that it is any of their business. I don't know their ages, why should they know mine?

[continuing smiling while people in the courtroom chuckle]

The Judge: Silence!

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: Ah, so you won't say in what year you were born then?

Jessica Medlicott: I was born in the year of my birth.

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: I assure you, it's quite customary to tell one's age in the witness box.

Jessica Medlicott: And I assure you it is quite incompatable with the civilized behavoir. No gentleman would dream about insisting upon it.

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: I'm sure my learned opponent would agree with you whole-heartedly. How he would like us to believe that all suck things such as birth certificates, eh, should be ignored or even surpressed.

Jessica Medlicott: Neither in my case. Merely lost.

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: How lost? In a fire?

Jessica Medlicott: In a fire, exactly.

Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones: And what fire was that, Mrs. Medicott?

Jessica Medlicott: Any fire you like.