BRADFORD:  Don’t you?  How astonishin’!  You must be color blind.  And I guess we’re the first party. (laughs) I was in Bill Joseph’s grocery store, one day last November, when in she comes—­Mrs Patrick, from New York.  ‘I’ve come to take the old life-saving station’, says she.  ’I’m going to sleep over there tonight!’ Huh!  Bill is used to queer ways—­he deals with summer folks, but that got him.  November—­an empty house, a buried house, you might say, off here on the outside shore—­way across the sand from man or beast.  He got it out of her, not by what she said, but by the way she looked at what he said, that her husband had died, and she was runnin’ off to hide herself, I guess.  A person’d feel sorry for her if she weren’t so stand-offish, and so doggon mean.  But mean folks have got minds of their own.  She slept here that night.  Bill had men hauling things till after dark—­bed, stove, coal.  And then she wanted somebody to work for her.  ‘Somebody’, says she, ’that doesn’t say an unnecessary word!’ Well, then Bill come to the back of the store, I said, ‘Looks to me as if Allie Mayo was the party she’s lookin’ for.’  Allie Mayo has got a prejudice against words.  Or maybe she likes ’em so well she’s savin’ of ’em.  She’s not spoke an unnecessary word for twenty years.  She’s got her reasons.  Women whose men go to sea ain’t always talkative.

(The CAPTAIN comes out.  He closes door behind him and stands there beside it.  He looks tired and disappointed.  Both look at him.  Pause.)

CAPTAIN:  Wonder who he was.

BRADFORD:  Young.  Guess he’s not been much at sea.

CAPTAIN:  I hate to leave even the dead in this house.  But we can get right back for him. (a look around) The old place used to be more friendly. (moves to outer door, hesitates, hating to leave like this) Well, Joe, we brought a good many of them back here.

BRADFORD:  Dannie Sears is tendin’ bar in Boston now.

(The three men go; as they are going around the drift of sand ALLIE MAYO comes in carrying a pot of coffee; sees them leaving, puts down the coffee pot, looks at the door the CAPTAIN has closed, moves toward it, as if drawn.  MRS PATRICK follows her in.)

MRS PATRICK:  They’ve gone?

(MRS MAYO nods, facing the closed door.)

MRS PATRICK:  And they’re leaving—­him? (again the other woman nods) Then he’s—? (MRS MAYO just stands there) They have no right—­just because it used to be their place—!  I want my house to myself!

(Snatches her coat and scarf from a hook and starts through the big door toward the dunes.)

ALLIE MAYO:  Wait.

(When she has said it she sinks into that corner seat—­as if overwhelmed by what she has done.  The other woman is held.)