trained fruit trees

Did everyone go home? --No, a few (of them) are still chatting.

“I don't mean all of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera,[…]the speed-mad fugitives from the furies of ennui, the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard—!”

Ingrateful Eve