DICK:  Creating?

HARRY:  Give it any name you want it to have—­it’s unsettling for a woman.  They say Claire’s a shark at it, but what’s the good of it, if it gets her?  What is the good of it, anyway?  Suppose we can produce new things.  Lord—­look at the one ones we’ve got. (looks outside; turns back) Heavens, what a noise the wind does make around this place, (but now it is not all the wind, but TOM EDGEWORTHY, who is trying to let himself in at the locked door, their backs are to him) I want my egg.  You can’t eat an egg without salt.  I must say I don’t get Claire lately.  I’d like to have Charlie Emmons see her—­he’s fixed up a lot of people shot to pieces in the war.  Claire needs something to tone her nerves up.  You think it would irritate her?

DICK:  She’d probably get no little entertainment out of it.

HARRY:  Yes, dog-gone her, she would. (TOM now takes more heroic measures to make himself heard at the door) Funny—­how the wind can fool you.  Now by not looking around I could imagine—­why, I could imagine anything.  Funny, isn’t it, about imagination?  And Claire says I haven’t got any!

DICK:  It would make an amusing drawing—­what the wind makes you think is there. (first makes forms with his hands, then levelling the soil prepared by ANTHONY, traces lines with his finger) Yes, really—­quite jolly.

(TOM, after a moment of peering in at them, smiles, goes away.)

HARRY:  You’re another one of the queer ducks, aren’t you?  Come now—­give me the dirt.  Have you queer ones really got anything—­or do you just put it over on us that you have?

DICK:  (smiles, draws on) Not saying anything, eh?  Well, I guess you’re wise there.  If you keep mum—­how are we going to prove there’s nothing there?

DICK:  I don’t keep mum.  I draw.

HARRY:  Lines that don’t make anything—­how can they tell you anything?  Well, all I ask is, don’t make Claire queer.  Claire’s a first water good sport—­really, so don’t encourage her to be queer.

DICK:  Trouble is, if you’re queer enough to be amusing, it might—­open the door to queerness.

HARRY:  Now don’t say things like that to Claire.

DICK:  I don’t have to.

HARRY:  Then you think she’s queer, do you?  Queer as you are, you think she’s queer.  I would like to have Dr Emmons come out. (after a moment of silently watching DICK, who is having a good time with his drawing) You know, frankly, I doubt if you’re a good influence for Claire. (DICK lifts his head ever so slightly) Oh, I don’t worry a bit about—­things a husband might worry about.  I suppose an intellectual woman—­and for all Claire’s hate of her ancestors, she’s got the bug herself.  Why, she has times of boring into things until she doesn’t know you’re there.  What do you think I caught her doing the other day?  Reading Latin.  Well—­a woman that reads Latin needn’t worry a husband much.