CAPTAIN:  Then I’m not doing him any harm.

BRADFORD:  (going over and shaking the frame where the boat once swung)
This the first time you ever been in this place, ain’t it, Tony?

TONY:  I never was here before.

BRADFORD:  Well, I was here before. (a laugh) And the old man—­(nodding toward the CAPTAIN) he lived here for twenty-seven years.  Lord, the things that happened here.  There’ve been dead ones carried through that door. (pointing to the outside door) Lord—­the ones I’ve carried.  I carried in Bill Collins, and Lou Harvey and—­huh! ’sall over now.  You ain’t seen no wrecks.  Don’t ever think you have.  I was here the night the Jennie Snow was out there. (pointing to the sea) There was a wreck.  We got the boat that stood here (again shaking the frame) down that bank. (goes to the door and looks out) Lord, how’d we ever do it?  The sand has put his place on the blink all right.  And then when it gets too God-for-saken for a life-savin’ station, a lady takes it for a summer residence—­and then spends the winter.  She’s a cheerful one.

TONY:  A woman—­she makes things pretty.  This not like a place where a woman live.  On the floor there is nothing—­on the wall there is nothing.  Things—­(trying to express it with his hands) do not hang on other things.

BRADFORD:  (imitating TONY_’s gesture_) No—­things do not hang on other things.  In my opinion the woman’s crazy—­sittin’ over there on the sand—­(a gesture towards the dunes) what’s she lookin’ at?  There ain’t nothin’ to see.  And I know the woman that works for her’s crazy—­Allie Mayo.  She’s a Provincetown girl.  She was all right once, but—­

(MRS PATRICK comes in from the hall at the right.  She is a ’city woman’, a sophisticated person who has been caught into something as unlike the old life as the dunes are unlike a meadow.  At the moment she is excited and angry.)

MRS PATRICK:  You have no right here.  This isn’t the life-saving station any more.  Just because it used to be—­I don’t see why you should think—­This is my house!  And—­I want my house to myself!

CAPTAIN:  (putting his head through the door.  One arm of the man he is working with is raised, and the hand reaches through the doorway) Well I must say, lady, I would think that any house could be a life-saving station when the sea had sent a man to it.

MRS PATRICK:  (who has turned away so she cannot see the hand) I don’t want him here!  I—­(defiant, yet choking) I must have my house to myself!

CAPTAIN:  You’ll get your house to yourself when I’ve made up my mind there’s no more life in this man.  A good many lives have been saved in this house, Mrs Patrick—­I believe that’s your name—­and if there’s any chance of bringing one more back from the dead, the fact that you own the house ain’t goin’ to make a damn bit of difference to me!