after dressing myself. And keep
your fingers off the raisins in that cake. And tell Essie the same. I
suppose I can trust you to bring in the case of stuffed birds without
breaking the glass? (She replaces the tin in the cupboard, which she
locks, pocketing the key carefully.)

CHRISTY (lingering at the fire). You'd better put the inkstand instead,
for the lawyer.

MRS. DUDGEON. That's no answer to make to me, sir. Go and do as you're
told. (Christy turns sullenly to obey.) Stop: take down that shutter
before you go, and let the daylight in: you can't expect me to do all
the heavy work of the house with a great heavy lout like you idling
about.

Christy takes the window bar out of its damps, and puts it aside; then
opens the shutter, showing the grey morning. Mrs. Dudgeon takes the
sconce from the mantelshelf; blows out the candle; extinguishes the
snuff by pinching it with her fingers, first licking them for the
purpose; and replaces the sconce on the shelf.

CHRISTY (looking through the window). Here's the minister's wife.

MRS. DUDGEON (displeased). What! Is she coming here?

CHRISTY. Yes.

MRS. DUDGEON. What does she want troubling me at this hour, before I'm
properly dressed to receive people?

CHRISTY. You'd better ask her.

MRS. DUDGEON (threateningly). You'd better keep a civil tongue in your
head. (He goes sulkily towards the door. She comes after him, plying
him with instructions.) Tell that girl to come to me as soon as she's
had her breakfast. And tell her to make herself fit to be seen before
the people. (Christy goes out and slams the door in her face.) Nice
manners, that! (Someone knocks at the house door: she turns and cries
inhospitably.) Come in. (Judith Anderson, the minister's wife, comes
in. Judith is more than twenty years younger than her husband, though
she will never be as young as he in vitality. She is pretty and proper
and ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an opinion of
herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which
serves her instead of strength. She has a pretty taste in dress, and in
her face the pretty lines of a sentimental character formed by dreams.
Even her little self-complacency is pretty, like a child's vanity.
Rather a pathetic creature to any sympathetic observer who knows how
rough a place the world is. One feels, on the whole, that Anderson
might have chosen worse, and that she, needing protection, could not
have chosen better.) Oh