HAN. Awkward people, these professors. But what would you do
about it, Asher? Wall up the universities?

ASHER. Their trustees, who are business men, should forbid professors
meddling in government and politics. This fellow had the impudence to
tell me to my face that my own workmen, whom I am paying, aren't working
for me. I'm only supposed to be supplying the capital. We talk about
Germany being an autocracy it's nothing to what this country has become!

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). An autocracy of professors instead of business
men. Well, every dog has his day. And George is coming home.

ASHER. And what is there left to hand over to him if he lives? What
future has the Pindar Shops,--which I have spent my life to build up?

DR. JONATHAN. If George lives, as we hope, you need not worry about the
future of the Pindar Shops, I think.

AUGUSTA. If God will only spare him!

ASHER. I guess I've about got to the point where I don't believe that a
God exists.

(A flash and a loud peal of thunder.)

AUGUSTA. Asher

ASHER. Then let Him strike me!

(He hurries abruptly out of the door, left.)

AUGUSTA (after a silence). During all the years of our married life, he
has never said such a thing as that. Asher an atheist!

DR. JONATHAN. So was Job, Augusta,--for a while.

AUGUSTA (avoiding DR. JONATHAN'S glance, and beginning to knit). You
wanted to speak to me, Jonathan?

(The MAID enters, lower right.)

MAID. Timothy Farrell, ma'am.

(Exit maid, enter TIMOTHY FARRELL.)

AUGUSTA. I'm afraid Mr. Pindar can't see you just now, Timothy.

TIMOTHY. It's you I've come to see, ma'am, if you'll bear with me,
--who once took an interest in Minnie.

AUGUSTA. It is true that I once took an interest in her, Timothy, but
I'm afraid I have lost it. 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 be