JOANNA. Meaning that we have the power to shape ourselves?

PURDIE. We have the power right enough.

JOANNA. But isn't that rather splendid?

PURDIE. For those who have the grit in them, yes. (Still seeing with a
strange clearness through the chink the hammer has made.) And they
are not the dismal chappies; they are the ones with the thin bright
faces. (He sits lugubriously by his wife and is sorry for the first
time that she has not married a better man.) I am afraid there is not
much fight in me, Mabel, but we shall see. If you catch me at it
again, have the goodness to whisper to me in passing, 'Lob's Wood.'
That may cure me for the time being.

MABEL (still certain that she loved him once but not so sure why.)
Perhaps I will ... as long as I care to bother, Jack. It depends on
you how long that is to be.

JOANNA (to break an awkward pause). I feel that there is hope in that
as well as a warning. Perhaps the wood may prove to have been useful
after all. (This brighter view of the situation meets with no
immediate response. With her next suggestion she reaches harbour.)
You know, we are not people worth being sorrowful about--so let us
laugh.

(The ladies succeed in laughing though not prettily, but the man has
been too much shaken.)

JOANNA (in the middle of her laugh). We have forgotten the others! I
wonder what is happening to them?

PURDIE (reviving). Yes, what about them? Have they changed!

MABEL. I didn't see any of them in the wood.

JOANNA. Perhaps we did see them without knowing them; we didn't know
Lob.

PURDIE (daunted). That's true.

JOANNA. Won't it be delicious to be here to watch them when they come
back, and see them waking up--or whatever it was we did.

PURDIE. What was it we did? I think something tapped me on the
forehead.

MABEL (blanching). How do we know the others will come back?

JOANNA (infected). We don't know. How awful!

MABEL. Listen!

PURDIE. I distinctly hear some one on the stairs.

MABEL. It will be Matey.

PURDIE (the chink beginning to close). Be cautious both of you; don't
tell him we have had any ... odd experiences.

(It is, however, MRS. COADE who comes downstairs in a dressing-gown
and carrying a candle and her husband's muffler.)

MRS. COADE. So you are back at last. A nice house, I must say. Where
is Coady?

PURDIE (taken aback). Coady! Did he go into the wood, too?

MRS. COADE (placidly). I suppose so. I have been down several times to
look