aback,)

DR. JONATHAN. Hello! I was told to come in here,--I hope I'm not
intruding.

GEORGE. Not at all. How--how long have you been here?

DR. JONATHAN. Just long enough to get my bearings. I came this morning.

GEORGE. Oh! Are you--are you Dr. Jonathan?

DR. JONATHAN. I'm Jonathan. And you're George, I suppose.

GEORGE. Yes. (He goes to him and shakes hands.) I'm sorry to be leaving
just as you come.

DR. JONATHAN. I'll be here when you return.

GEORGE. I hope so (a pause). You won't find Foxon Falls a bad old town.

DR. JONATHAN. And it will be a better one when you come back.

GEORGE. Why do you say that?

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). It seems a safe conjecture.

(Dr. JONATHAN is looking at the heap of articles on the floor.)

GEORGE (grinning, and not quite at ease). You might imagine I was
embarking in the gent's furnishing business, instead of going to war.
(He picks up the life-preserving suit.) Some friend of mother's told her
about this, and she insisted upon sending for it. I don't want to hurt
her feelings, but I can't take it, of course.

(He rolls it up and thrusts it under the sofa, upper left.)

You won't give me away?

DR. JONATHAN. Never!

GEORGE. Dad ought to be here in a minute, he's in there with old Timothy
Farrell, the moulder foreman. It seems that things are in a mess at the
shops. Rotten of the men to make trouble now--don't you think?--when the
country's at war! Darned unpatriotic, I say.

DR. JONATHAN. I saw a good many stars in your service flag as I passed
the office door this morning.

GEORGE. Yes. Over four hundred of our men have enlisted. I don't
understand it.

DR. JONATHAN. Perhaps you will, George, when you come home.

GEORGE. You mean--

(GEORGE is interrupted by the entrance, lower right, of his mother,
AUGUSTA PINDAR. She is now in the fifties, and her hair is turning
grey. Her uneventful, provincial existence as ASHER'S wife has
confirmed and crystallized her traditional New England views, her
conviction that her mission is to direct for good the lives of the
less fortunate by whom she is surrounded. She carries her knitting
in her hand,--a pair of socks for GEORGE. And she goes at once to
DR. JONATHAN.)

AUGUSTA. So you are Jonathan. They told me you'd arrived--why didn't
you come to us? Do you think it's wise to live in that old house of your
father's before it's been thoroughly heated for a few days?

DR. JONATHAN (takin