- Mrs. Fraser: Everything in order nurse?
- Chummy Browne: It would seem, Betty, as though your baby is presenting in the breech position.
- Betty Smith: You what?
- Chummy Browne: It's coming out arse-first.
- Jenny Lee: You can ride a bike?
- Chummy Browne: I can ride a horse. That can't be so very different, surely.
- Chummy Browne: You put a nip of something in it!
- Fred: Army trick.
- Chummy Browne: Before going into battle?
- Fred: Before going into the other ranks' latrines.
- [Chummy Browne, a tall, gawky, clumsy midwife, has just arrived at the convent]
- Sister Evangelina: Ah, Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne?
- Chummy Browne: I generally answer to "Chummy." My pa used to say "Long dogs need short names."
- Sister Evangelina: Follow me. And mind your head. I understand you qualified by a whisker, Nurse Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne.
- Chummy Browne: I did pass. It was a bit of a scrape. Before that I was nursing for five years.
- [Sister Evangelina brings out box containing a midwife's standard kit]
- Sister Evangelina: Do you need me to go through this piece by piece?
- Chummy Browne: Not remotely.
- [Chummy looks in the box]
- Chummy Browne: What's that?
- Sister Evangelina: It's an enema nozzle.
- Chummy Browne: It's made of glass.
- Sister Evangelina: Do you break things?
- Chummy Browne: No.
- Sister Evangelina: And are all your dresses pink?
- Chummy Browne: I do have another - in eau-de-nil.
- Sister Evangelina: [ironically] I bet you look a picture in that, too.
- Mature Jenny: She wouldn't kill him. No mother ever did. She would only curse his name and say there'd never be a next time. And she would mean it. And there always was.
- Chummy Browne: Do you suppose this is how fighter pilots felt waiting for the call to fly?
- Fred: I dunno. I was an Army man myself. Pioneer Corps.
- Chummy Browne: Gosh. One of the glamor boys?
- Fred: Well, I specialized in lavatories. It's a myth that an army marches on its stomach. What a fighting man needs is a top-notch khazi.
- Father Joe: Babies are always placed for adoption in these cases. It's thought to be in the child's best interests.
- Jenny Lee: What about Mary's interests? She's the mother! She did not consent!
- Father Joe: Nurse Lee. She can't consent. She's only 15, still legally a child herself. It was a case of which child should we choose. How can a girl of 15 with no home, no education, no trade other than that of prostitution bring up a baby?
- Jenny Lee: She gave up prostitution.
- Father Joe: She doesn't have that choice. And you're not the only one who's angry! But you're young. You can be angry in the abstract, and our Lord will love you for your righteous indignation.
- Mature Jenny: I used to think that night was a time for women. All day, the docks were raucous with the lives of men, lightermen and stevedores, dockers and pilots, the sailors and the drivers of the trains. In the smallest hours, only the river's voice was heard. Only women were awake. Men slept... mostly.