HARRY:  (hastily) Your mother has been working awfully hard at all this.

ELIZABETH:  Well, now that I’m here you’ll let me help you, won’t you, mother?

CLAIRE:  (trying for control) You needn’t—­bother.

ELIZABETH:  But I want to.  Help add to the wealth of the world.

CLAIRE:  Will you please get it out of your head that I am adding to the wealth of the world!

ELIZABETH:  But, mother—­of course you are.  To produce a new and better kind of plant—­

CLAIRE:  They may be new.  I don’t give a damn whether they’re better.

ELIZABETH:  But—­but what are they then?

CLAIRE:  (as if choked out of her) They’re different.

ELIZABETH:  (thinks a minute, then laughs triumphantly) But what’s the use of making them different if they aren’t better?

HARRY:  A good square question, Claire.  Why don’t you answer it?

CLAIRE:  I don’t have to answer it.

HARRY:  Why not give the girl a fair show?  You never have, you know. 
Since she’s interested, why not tell her what it is you’re doing?

CLAIRE:  She is not interested.

ELIZABETH:  But I am, mother.  Indeed I am.  I do want awfully to understand what you are doing, and help you.

CLAIRE:  You can’t help me, Elizabeth.

HARRY:  Why not let her try?

CLAIRE:  Why do you ask me to do that?  This is my own thing.  Why do you make me feel I should—­(goes to ELIZABETH) I will be good to you, Elizabeth.  We’ll go around together.  I haven’t done it, but—­you’ll see.  We’ll do gay things.  I’ll have a lot of beaus around for you.  Anything else.  Not—­this is—­Not this.

ELIZABETH:  As you like, mother, of course.  I just would have been so glad to—­to share the thing that interests you. (hurt borne with good breeding and a smile)

HARRY:  Claire! (which says, ’How can you?’)

CLAIRE:  (who is looking at ELIZABETH) Yes, I will try.

TOM:  I don’t think so.  As Claire says—­anything else.

ELIZABETH:  Why, of course—­I don’t at all want to intrude.

HARRY:  It’ll do Claire good to take someone in.  To get down to brass tacks and actually say what she’s driving at.

CLAIRE:  Oh—­Harry.  But yes—­I will try. (does try, but no words come.  Laughs) When you come to say it it’s not—­One would rather not nail it to a cross of words—­(laughs again) with brass tacks.

HARRY:  (affectionately) But I want to see you put things into words,
Claire, and realize just where you are.

CLAIRE:  (oddly) You think that’s a—­good idea?

ELIZABETH:  (in her manner of holding the world capably in her hands) Now let’s talk of something else.  I hadn’t the least idea of making mother feel badly.

CLAIRE:  (desperately) No, we’ll go on.  Though I don’t know—­where we’ll end.  I can’t answer for that.  These plants—­(beginning flounderingly) Perhaps they are less beautiful—­less sound—­than the plants from which they diverged.  But they have found—­otherness, (laughs a little shrilly) If you know—­what I mean.