ELIZABETH:  Why, mother—­aren’t you well?

HARRY:  Your mother has been working pretty hard at all this.

ELIZABETH:  Oh, I do so want to know all about it?  Perhaps I can help you!  I think it’s just awfully amusing that you’re doing something.  One does nowadays, doesn’t one?—­if you know what I mean.  It was the war, wasn’t it, made it the thing to do something?

DICK:  (slyly) And you thought, Claire, that the war was lost.

ELIZABETH:  The war?  Lost! (her capable laugh) Fancy our losing a war!  Miss Lane says we should give thanks.  She says we should each do some expressive thing—­you know what I mean?  And that this is the keynote of the age.  Of course, one’s own kind of thing.  Like mother—­growing flowers.

CLAIRE:  You think that is one’s own kind of thing?

ELIZABETH:  Why, of course I do, mother.  And so does Miss Lane.  All the girls—­

CLAIRE:  (shaking her head as if to get something out) S-hoo.

ELIZABETH:  What is it, mother?

CLAIRE:  A fly shut up in my ear—­’All the girls!’

ELIZABETH:  (laughing) Mother was always so amusing.  So different—­if you know what I mean.  Vacations I’ve lived mostly with Aunt Adelaide, you know.

CLAIRE:  My sister who is fitted to rear children.

HARRY:  Well, somebody has to do it.

ELIZABETH:  And I do love Aunt Adelaide, but I think its going to be awfully amusing to be around with mother now—­and help her with her work.  Help do some useful beautiful thing.

CLAIRE:  I am not doing any useful beautiful thing.

ELIZABETH:  Oh, but you are, mother.  Of course you are.  Miss Lane says so.  She says it is your splendid heritage gives you this impulse to do a beautiful thing for the race.  She says you are doing in your way what the great teachers and preachers behind you did in theirs.

CLAIRE:  (who is good for little more) Well, all I can say is, Miss
Lane is stung.

ELIZABETH:  Mother!  What a thing to say of Miss Lane. (from this slipping into more of a little girl manner) Oh, she gave me a spiel one day about living up to the men I come from.

(CLAIRE turns and regards her daughter.)

CLAIRE:  You’ll do it, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH:  Well, I don’t know.  Quite a job, I’ll say.  Of course, I’d have to do it in my way.  I’m not going to teach or preach or be a stuffy person.  But now that—­(she here becomes the product of a superior school) values have shifted and such sensitive new things have been liberated in the world—­

CLAIRE:  (low) Don’t use those words.

ELIZABETH:  Why—­why not?

CLAIRE:  Because you don’t know what they mean.

ELIZABETH:  Why, of course I know what they mean!

CLAIRE:  (turning away) You’re—­stepping on the plants.