[TIPPY enters, carrying tea tray.]

TIPPY.  Hello!  Where’s the rest of the tea party? [Neither answers.] Well, we’ll have double portions, that’s nice.

LAURA.  Tippy, doesn’t your world ever fall out from under you?

TIPPY.  Certainly not! [Pause.]

LAURA. [With forced gayety.] I say, where’s Martin?

TIPPY.  Can it be that you are asking for Martin!

LAURA.  Uh-huh.  I’m ready for him to turn me into a Communist.

TIPPY.  That is news!—­Where did Kate go?

LAURA.  To make a date with her boss.  He’s sixty and rich—­and serious.

TIPPY.  No kidding?—­No, my world doesn’t drop out from under me.  It merely turns wrong side out in my hand.—­Your tea, Ken.  It contains teaffein, which stimulates the heart but quiets the nerves.  Teaffein in tea is the same as caffein in coffee.  But under the profit system we don’t know that yet—­because no one has invented a teaffeinless tea.

[KEN accepts sandwich and tea and tries to be a sport and make the party.]

KEN.  I wouldn’t need Martin to turn me into a Communist.  All I’d have to do would be to knock out the partition in the middle of my brains and let the left side mingle with the right.

TIPPY.  As if your brains weren’t muddled enough already!

[MARTIN bursts in, carrying two Soviet posters.  Leaves door ajar.]

MARTIN.  Hey, fellows, see what I’ve got! [He hangs one up while the others are inspecting the first.]

LAURA.  It’s ugly.

KEN.  I like them.  Why can’t Americans make ugly things look beautiful?

TIPPY. [To MARTIN.] Sow your seed now, Soviet sower.  The powers of darkness have been fertilizing the ground.

[TIPPY takes thumb tacks and bottle of red ink and goes to kitchen.]

KEN.  A Soviet poster compared to an American lithograph is like a Soviet film compared with the stuff they grind out in Hollywood.

MARTIN.  By God, you’re right.—­It’s the same in all the arts.

LAURA. [Hysterically jovial.] ’Fess up, Ken.  Who’s been taking you to American movies?

KEN.  I still remember some I saw during Hoover’s administration.  You don’t mean they’ve changed them?

MARTIN.  Only the revolution will change that tripe.

LAURA.  Gently, Martin.  I just told Tippy I was all ripe to turn Communist.  But let’s enter by the Socialist door.  I don’t like revolutzia.  It’s bloody.

[MARTIN pours himself tea.  KEN squints at posters, LAURA munches sandwich and giggles.] Comrade Martin—­bring on your material dialectics.

[Before MARTIN has chance to answer, TIPPY’S voice sings stridently, as he comes marching in.]

TIPPY.  Belaya armeya chornee barone
            Snova gotovyat nam tsarskee trone