(Having insinuated this barb into the flesh of her ‘dear sister,’ she takes up her crochet with an air of great contentment.  Mrs. James, meanwhile, to make herself more at home, now that tea is finished, undoes her bonnet-strings with a tug, and lets them hang.  She is not in the best of tempers.)

LAURA.  I don’t believe she recognised me.  Why did she keep on calling me ‘Jane’?

JULIA.  She took you for poor Aunt Jane, I fancy.

LAURA (infuriated at being taken for anyone ’poor’). 
Why should she do that, pray?

JULIA.  Well, there always was a likeness, you know; and you are older than you were, Laura.

LAURA (crushingly).  Does ‘poor Aunt Jane’ wear widow’s weeds? (This reminds her not only of her own condition, but of other things as well.  She sits up and takes a stiller bigger bite into her new world.) Julia!...  Where’s William?

JULIA.  I haven’t inquired.

LAURA (self-importance and a sense of duty consuming her.) I wish to see him.

JULIA.  Better not, as it didn’t occur to you before.

LAURA.  Am I not to see my own husband, pray?

JULIA.  He didn’t ever live here, you know.

LAURA.  He can come, I suppose.  He has got legs like the rest of us.

JULIA.  Yes, but one can’t force people:  at least, not here.  You should remember that—­before he married you—­he had other ties.

(Mrs. James preserves her self-possession, but there is battle in her eye.)

LAURA.  He was married to me longer than he was to Isabel.

JULIA.  They had children.

LAURA.  I could have had children if I chose.  I didn’t choose....  Julia, how am I to see him?

JULIA (Washing her hands of it).  You must manage for yourself,
Laura.

LAURA.  I’m puzzled!  Here are we in the next world just as we expected, and where are all the—?  I mean, oughtn’t we to be seeing a great many more things than we do?

JULIA.  What sort of things?

LAURA.  Well,... have you seen Moses and the Prophets?

JULIA.  I haven’t looked for them, Laura.  On Sundays, I still go to hear
Mr. Moore.

LAURA.  That’s you all over!  You never would go o the celebrated preachers. 
But I mean to. (Pious curiosity awakens.) What happens here, on
Sundays?

JULIA (smiling).  Oh, just the same.

LAURA.  No High Church ways, I hope?  If they go in for that here, I shall go out!

JULIA (patiently explanatory).  You will go out if you wish to go out.  You can choose your church.  As I tell you, I always go to hear Mr. Moore; you can go and hear Canon Farrar.

LAURA.  Dean Farrar, I suppose you mean.

JULIA.  He was not Dean in my day.

LAURA.  He ought to have been a Bishop—­Archbishop, I think—­ so learned, and such a magnificent preacher.  But I still wonder why we don’t see Moses and the Prophets.