to be around with mother now--and help her with her
work. Help do some useful beautiful thing.

CLAIRE: I am not doing any useful beautiful thing.

ELIZABETH: Oh, but you are, mother. Of course you are. Miss Lane says
so. She says it is your splendid heritage gives you this impulse to do a
beautiful thing for the race. She says you are doing in your way what
the great teachers and preachers behind you did in theirs.

CLAIRE: (_who is good for little more_) Well, all I can say is, Miss
Lane is stung.

ELIZABETH: Mother! What a thing to say of Miss Lane. (_from this
slipping into more of a little girl manner_) Oh, she gave me a spiel one
day about living up to the men I come from.

(CLAIRE _turns and regards her daughter_.)

CLAIRE: You'll do it, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH: Well, I don't know. Quite a job, I'll say. Of course, I'd
have to do it in my way. I'm not going to teach or preach or be a stuffy
person. But now that--(_she here becomes the product of a superior
school_) values have shifted and such sensitive new things have been
liberated in the world--

CLAIRE: (_low_) Don't use those words.

ELIZABETH: Why--why not?

CLAIRE: Because you don't know what they mean.

ELIZABETH: Why, of course I know what they mean!

CLAIRE: (_turning away_) You're--stepping on the plants.

HARRY: (_hastily_) Your mother has been working awfully hard at all
this.

ELIZABETH: Well, now that I'm here you'll let me help you, won't you,
mother?

CLAIRE: (_trying for control_) You needn't--bother.

ELIZABETH: But I _want_ to. Help add to the wealth of the world.

CLAIRE: Will you please get it out of your head that I am adding to the
wealth of the world!

ELIZABETH: But, mother--of course you are. To produce a new and better
kind of plant--

CLAIRE: They may be new. I don't give a damn whether they're better.

ELIZABETH: But--but what are they then?

CLAIRE: (_as if choked out of her_) They're different.

ELIZABETH: (_thinks a minute, then laughs triumphantly_) But what's the
use of making them different if they aren't better?

HARRY: A good square question, Claire. Why don't you answer it?

CLAIRE: I don't have to answer it.

HARRY: Why not give the girl a fair show? You never have, you know.
Since she's interested, why not tell her what it is you're doing?

CLAIRE: She is not interested.

ELIZABETH: But I am, mother. Indeed I am. I do want awfully to
understand what you are doing, and help you.

CLAIRE: Y