- Mrs. Waterbury: May I borrow your lamp please.
- Cart Man: I dare say.
- Mrs. Waterbury: If you say 'I dare say' once more I shall have hysterics, I dare say.
- Bobbie Waterbury: It's Perks's birthday, he's 42, he says he got other things to keep than his birthday, not rabbits and secrets but the kids and the bloomin' missus.
- Mrs. Waterbury: Wife and children Bobbie.
- Bobbie Waterbury: Same thing isn't it?
- Phyllis Waterbury: Bloomin' missus is a sort of a germ of endearment isn't it?
- Mrs. Waterbury: Term of endearment Phil.
- Peter Waterbury: I'm very sorry I haven't got tuppence to give you like father does.
- Albert Perks: Hey just stop that please, I wasn't thinking about no tuppence. I just came to say sorry your mama wasn't so well and to ask how she finds herself this evening. And I brought you some sweet briar, very sweet. Tuppence indeed!
- [as the smoke on the station platform clears, Bobbie sees her father who has just been released from prison. Diffidently, she runs towards him]
- Bobbie Waterbury: Daddy! My Daddy!
- Bobbie Waterbury: There's going to be a paperchase tomorrow.
- Phyllis Waterbury: Whippee!
- Bobbie Waterbury: The boys from the grammar school are doing it.
- Phyllis Waterbury: Zippee!
- Bobbie Waterbury: Perks says we can go by the ramp.
- Phyllis Waterbury: What's a paperchase?
- Phyllis Waterbury: I don't think we're going to enjoy being poor, you know, being cold and all that.
- Bobbie Waterbury: Phyllis try to imagine it as an adventure, all sorts of things might happen.
- Phyllis Waterbury: It's like we're in a besieged castle, the arrows of the foe striking against the battlements.
- Peter Waterbury: No, it's more like a great big garden squirt.
- Phyllis Waterbury: You're a great big garden squirt.
- Peter Waterbury: Thank you.
- Phyllis Waterbury: I O N. There; 'Look out at the station'.
- Bobbie Waterbury: One of your finest works, Michaelangelo.
- Phyllis Waterbury: Why don't we ask the next train to take our love to Daddy?
- Peter Waterbury: Trains don't carry people's love, they'd be above that.
- Phyllis Waterbury: Yes, they do if you tame them first. I wonder why Daddy hasn't written to us.
- Bobbie Waterbury: Mummy says he's too busy. He'll write soon, she says.
- Phyllis Waterbury: Well, why don't we wave anyway? Three waves won't matter. We won't miss them.
- [so start waving]
- Peter Waterbury: [quietly to his siblings after their Mother has just finished scolding them] Isn't she marvelous when she's angry.