. I dislike to say this to you, her father, but
it's so.

TIMOTHY. Don't be hard on her, Mrs. Pindar. She may have been wild-like
in Newcastle, but since she was back here to work for the doctor she's
been a good girl, and that happy I wouldn't know her, and a comfort to
me in me old age,--what with Bert gone, and Jamesy taken to drink! And
now she's run away and left me alone entirely, with the shops closed,
and no work to do.

AUGUSTA (knitting). She's left Foxon Falls?

TIMOTHY (breaking down for a moment). When I woke up this morning I
found a letter beside me bed--I'm not to worry, she says and I know
how fond of me she was--be the care she took of me. She's been keeping
company with no young man--that I know. If she wasn't working with the
doctor on that discovery she'd be home with me.

AUGUSTA. I'm sorry for you, Timothy, but I don't see what I can do.

TIMOTHY. I minded that you were talking to her yesterday in the
lab'rat'ry, before the telegram came about Mr. George.

AUGUSTA. Well?

TIMOTHY. It was just a hope, ma'am, catching at a straw-like.

AUGUSTA (tightening her lips). I repeat that I'm sorry for you, Timothy.
I have no idea where she has gone.

TIMOTHY (looking at her fixedly. She pauses in her knitting and returns
his look). Very well, ma'am--there's no need of my bothering you. You've
heard nothing more of Mr. George?

AUGUSTA (with sudden tears). They're sending him home.

TIMOTHY. And now that ye're getting him back, ma'am, ye might think with
a little more charity of her that belongs to me--the only one I'd have
left.

(TIMOTHY goes out, lower right. AUGUSTA is blinded by tears. She
lets fall her ball of wool. DR. JONATHAN picks it up.)

AUGUSTA. I try to be fair in my judgments, and true to my convictions,
but what Minnie has done cannot be condoned.

DR. JONATHAN (sitting down beside AUGUSTA) And what has Minnie done,
Augusta?

AUGUSTA. You ask me that? I try hard to give you credit, Jonathan, for
not knowing the ways of the world--but it's always been difficult to
believe that Minnie Farrell had become well--a bad woman.

DR. JONATHAN. A bad woman. I gather, then, that you don't believe in the
Christian doctrines of repentance and regeneration.

AUGUSTA (bridling). The leopard doesn't change his spots. And has she
shown any sign of repentance? Has she come to me and asked my pardon for
the way in which she treated me? Has she gone to church and asked God's
forgivene