Scene 10. LEONARD & SHELDON'S APARTMENT.

Leonard & Penny are washing the dishes after the meal. Sheldon and Howard are wearing communication headsets while playing some unidentified video game. The doorbell rings.

SHELDON: Leonard! Doorbell!

Leonard hefts a sudsy plate up for Sheldon to see.

LEONARD: Kinda busy here, Sheldon.

SHELDON: But we're playing Bloodbowl online! I can't pause the game without losing! There's an extremely sarcastic, thoroughly irritating thirteen-year-old boy from London and he keeps referring to me as Smelldon! (pause) Yes, I know you can hear me. (pause) Well now, that's what they call "escalation", isn't it? What time is it there anyway? Shouldn't you be sleeping? (pause) How dare you say that about my Elves! You just wait! Your miserable orcs don't stand a chance against my offensive line!

During all this the doorbell has now rung several times. Leonard and Penny share a look.

LEONARD: Howard, can't you answer the damn door?

HOWARD: No way. We've almost got him, Leonard.

LEONARD: It's a thirteen-year-old kid!

HOWARD: Yep. And I'm on his team. You're going down, Smelldon.

SHELDON: YOU! SHALL NOT! PASS!

The doorbell rings again.

LEONARD: Sheldon! Room-mate agreement - page 62, paragraph 4, sub-clause 2.

SHELDON: Confound him!

He throws off the headset and puts down the controller. Howard holds aloft his arms in victory.

HOWARD: Congratulations, buddy! We got him! (pause) Uh...no. (pause) Uh...well, I'm sure it can be very lonely and confusing. (pause) Uh...the only one at your whole school, huh? (pause) No, not a huge "Glee" fan. (quickly) I'm gonna go now, bye.

SHELDON: Don't consider this a true victory, Wolowitz. I'm bound by the terms of the room-mate agreement (as the doorbell rings again) all right, all right! Good Lord, some people don't know the meaning of the word patience, do they?

He opens the door. There stands DAPHNE CRANE. She has a young boy with her, of about seven or eight.

DAPHNE: Hello. I'm looking for Niles Crane? I believe he's treating someone in this apartment?

SHELDON: That would be me. I'm Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

DAPHNE: So you're the one keeping my husband a thousand miles from home during his son's birthday weekend? You're the one that's caused me to have to cancel all the family plans we made to fly down here, just because your Dean has some sort of hold over my husband and won't let him go back to Seattle until you get a bloody grip on yourself?

SHELDON: I thought we had already established that?

Leonard appears beside Sheldon at the door. He smiles at Daphne and the child beside her and offers his hand, which Daphne, after a second's hesitation, shakes.

LEONARD: Dr. Leonard Hofstadter, Mrs Crane. Please, come in.

Daphne and the boy enter the apartment. Daphne is clearly feeling somewhat abashed after her previous outburst.

DAPHNE: (to Sheldon) Dr. Cooper, I…I'm sorry about just now.

SHELDON: Sorry for what?

DAPHNE: (quietly, to Leonard) Has he memory problems?

LEONARD: No. His memory is flawless. It's the rest of him you have to worry about. So who might you be?

Daphne makes as if to speak, but the child gets there first.

DAVID: Who "might" I be? That seems rather unspecific way of talking. The possibility exists, however remote, that I "might" be Louis the sixteenth of France.

DAPHNE: David! Manners!

SHELDON: David Manners, I'm Dr. Sheldon Cooper. I apologise for the wooliness of thinking of my room-mate Dr. Hofstadter. At this rate we'll be able to shear him come the summer and make comfortable sweaters. You'll excuse me if I don't shake your hand?

DAVID: Not at all, Dr. Cooper. A wise precaution. Over ninety percent of communicable diseases are passed through avoidable physical contact. However, my surname is not Manners, it's Crane.

SHELDON: Ah. My apologies for the error.

DAVID: Not at all. The error was spawned from your entirely justified misunderstanding of my mother's rebuke.

SHELDON: She rebuked you? (he looks at Daphne in a stern manner) Whatever for?

DAVID: Alas. A question I ponder myself all too often. I've observed that while it is a common assumption that experience, and therefore wisdom, accumulates with age, this assumption is not necessarily supported by evidence.

SHELDON: I had the same revelation at age four when asked to say Grace.

Penny, who like everyone else has been silently observing this exchange, walks over to Daphne.

PENNY: Drink?

DAPHNE: Penny?

PENNY: That's me.

DAPHNE: (shrewdly) I see your mole has cleared up. And you've lost ninety pounds. And your left arm has grown back.

She smiles as she says it and Penny laughs. They shake hands.

PENNY: Niles is over in my apartment. He's counselling a friend of ours, Rajesh. He's trying to...he's...(she sighs) you know what, if I said it out loud, it would break my heart a little bit. Should I go and tell him you and David are here?

DAPHNE: Well if he's working, perhaps not. I'm sure he won't be long. This is sort of a surprise, you see. I thought if he couldn't come to us, we'd go to him. I didn't want him to miss David's birthday. We had all these grand plans in Seattle but I thought, it won't be the same without him. Besides, grand plans aren't really my style anyway. I'd be happy with a family meal at a modest restaurant.

SHELDON: You're in luck. Restaurants don't come much more modest than Penny's place of work.

PENNY: Thank you, Sheldon.

SHELDON: (to David) That was sarcasm.

DAVID: Thank you. I have trouble identifying it.

LEONARD: (aside, to Howard) Dear God. It's like looking into the past.

DAPHNE: Well, you two seem to be getting on famously. I must apologise to you all for just showing up, though. I hope I didn't interrupt anything.

SHELDON: You did abort my attempt to utterly destroy a thirteen-year-old's linebackers with my mighty Elven warrior.

Daphne says nothing, but takes a long step forward and drapes her arm protectively over her son's shoulders.

PENNY: Relax.

LEONARD: He's talking about a video game. It's a version of football except it's played with orcs and elves. It's based on a tabletop game.

DAVID: So it's a simulation of a simulation of a sport?

SHELDON: Precisely.

DAVID: Excellent. That's my desired level of separation from actual sport.

DAPHNE: Chip off the old block, this little lad. (to Penny) You mentioned drink?