ELLA:  It’s Mr. Mifflin, sir.

GIBSON:  All right.

[MIFFLIN, beaming and bubbling, more radiant than in Act 1, but dressed as then except for a change of tie, comes from the house.  He carries his umbrella and hat and the same old magazines and a newspaper.]

MIFFLIN:  Ah, Mr. Gibson, you couldn’t stay away any longer!

GIBSON:  How de do!  Sit down!

MIFFLIN [effervescing, as they sit]:  It’s glorious!  I heard from your household you were expected back this Sunday.  Now confess!  You couldn’t stay away!  You had to come and watch it!

GIBSON:  Well, I’ve not had to come and watch it for four months.  I don’t expect to watch it much, now.

MIFFLIN:  You don’t mean to sit there and tell me you don’t know anything about it!

GIBSON:  No; I don’t know anything about it.

MIFFLIN:  Mr. Gibson, you’re an extraordinary man!

GIBSON:  No, I’m not.  What I did was extraordinary, but I was only an ordinary man pushed into a hole.

MIFFLIN:  Oh, no; surrendering the factory was merely normal.  What’s remarkable is your staying away from watching the glorious work these former hireling workmen of your factory are doing, now they’ve won their industrial freedom.  Myself, I’ve taken rooms near by:  I started to do one article; now I have a series.  And oh, the glory of watching these comrades with their economic shackles off!  Haven’t you heard anything of our success?

GIBSON:  Only a word from my housemaid.

MIFFLIN [delightedly, pinning him]:  Aha!  There!  What did she say? 
“Only a word”; but what was IT?

GIBSON:  It indicated—­prosperity.

MIFFLIN:  Ah!  Immense prosperity, didn’t it?

GIBSON:  I suppose so.  Success, at any rate.

MIFFLIN:  Success?  It’s so magnificent that now it’s inevitable for every factory of every kind all over this country.

GIBSON:  All over the country?

MIFFLIN:  Not only all over this country!  The world must do it.  Ah, they’ve done it in a country larger than this already!  And these comrades right here are showing our country what it means.  I don’t begrudge you some credit for having begun it, Mr. Gibson.  But you only anticipated what all owners everywhere are going to have to do before the workmen simply take the factories.  They’re going to take them because they have the inherent right; and they’re going to take them now, either by direct action or by the technical owners, like yourself, seeing the handwriting on the wall.

GIBSON:  What do you mean by direct action?

MIFFLIN:  Why, just taking them!

GIBSON:  By force?

MIFFLIN [deprecatingly but affably]:  Oh, we hope the theoretical owners won’t reduce them to such extremes.  There might be a few cases that law-abiding citizens would regret; but that isn’t the big thing.  Our work here is so far perhaps on the small scale, but it shows—­it shows—­that everything must be on a cooeperative basis!