MARTHA.  I don’t know.

JULIA (seeing harassment in her sister’s eye).  Arrived safely, at any rate.

MARTHA.  I think I was in a railway accident, but I can’t be sure.  I only heard the crash and people shouting.  I didn’t wait to see.  I just put my fingers in my ears, and ran away.

LAURA.  Why do you think it was a railway accident?

MARTHA.  Because I was in a railway carriage.  I was coming to your funeral.  If you’d told me you were ill I’d have come before.  I was bringing you a wreath.  And then, as I tell you, there was a crash and a shout; and that’s all I know about it.

LAURA.  Lor’, Martha!  I suppose they’ll have an inquest on you.

MARTHA (stung). I think they’d better mind their own business, and you mind yours!

JULIA.  Laura!  Here we don’t talk about such things.  They don’t concern us. 
Would you like tea, Martha, or will you wait for supper?

MARTHA (who has shaken her head at the offer of tea, and nodded a preference for supper).  You know how I’ve always dreaded death.

JULIA.  Oh, don’t, my dear Martha!  It’s past.

MARTHA.  Yes; but it’s upset me.  The relief, that’s what I can’t get over:  the relief!

JULIA.  Presently you will be more used to it.

(She helps her off with her cloak.)

MARTHA.  There were people sitting to right and to left of me and opposite; and suddenly a sort of crash of darkness seemed to come all over me, and I saw nothing more.  I didn’t feel anything:  only a sort of a jar here.

(She indicates the back of her neck.  Julia finds these anatomical details painful, and holds her hands deprecatingly; but Laura has no such qualms.  She is now undoing the parcel which, she considers, is hers.)

LAURA.  I daresay it was only somebody’s box from the luggage-rack.  I’ve known that happen.  I don’t suppose for a minute that it was a railway accident.

(She unfurls the tissue paper of the box and takes out the wreath)

JULIA.  Why talk about it?

LAURA.  Anyway, nothing has happened to these.  ’With fondest love from
Martha.’  H’m.  Pretty!

JULIA.  Martha, would you like to go upstairs with your things?  And you,
Laura?

MARTHA.  I will presently, when I’ve got warm.

LAURA.  Not yet.  Martha, why was I put into that odious shaped coffin?  More like a canoe than anything.  I said it was to be straight,

MARTHA.  I’d nothing to do with it, Laura.  I wasn’t there.  You know I wasn’t.

LAURA.  If you’d come when I asked you, you could have seen to it.

MARTHA.  You didn’t tell me you were dying.

LAURA.  Do people tell each other when they are dying?  They don’t know.  I told you I wasn’t well.

MARTHA.  You always told me that, just when I’d settled down somewhere else....  Of course I’d have come if I’d known! (testily).