Elizabeth: Oliver’s mind is made up about the common, whatever happens.  John will make no difference.

Mrs. Cromwell: You can’t pretend he’ll make him more temperate.

Elizabeth: It’s very wrong to take away the common from the people.  I think Oliver is right.

Mrs. Cromwell: Of course he’s right.  But I’m too old.  I’ve seen too many broken heads.  He’ll be no righter for a broken head.

(BRIDGET CROMWELL, a girl, comes.  She takes some eggs from her apron and puts them on a dish on a shelf.)

Bridget: Why, grandmother, whose head is to be broken?

Mrs. Cromwell: Your father’s is like to be.

Bridget: You mean to-morrow?

Elizabeth: At the meeting, yes.

Bridget: But he must do it.  Why, the people have fished and kept cattle there longer than any one can remember.  Who is an Earl of Bedford to take it away from them?  I know I would let my head be broken first.

Elizabeth: It is said that the King gave leave.

Bridget: Then the King gave what wasn’t his to give.

Mrs. Cromwell: Now, child, don’t you encourage your father, too.  He’s eager enough without that.

Bridget: But I must, grandmother.  There’s too much of this kind of interference everywhere.  Father says that Cousin John Hampden says—­

Mrs. Cromwell: And that’s three of you in one house.  And this young Mr. Ireton has ideas, too, I believe.

Bridget: Mr. Ireton is twenty-eight.

Mrs. Cromwell: That accounts for it.

Bridget: You don’t think they just ought to be allowed to take the common away, do you, grandmother?

Mrs. Cromwell: It makes no matter what I think.

Bridget: Of course you don’t.  None of us do.  We couldn’t.

Elizabeth: You mustn’t tease your grandmother, Bridget.

Mrs. Cromwell: She’s a very old lady, and can’t speak for herself.

Bridget: I meant no ill manners, grandmother.

Mrs. Cromwell: Never mind your manners child.  But don’t encourage your father.  He doesn’t need it.  This house is all commotion as it is.

Bridget: I can’t help it.  There’s so much going on everywhere.  The King doesn’t deal fairly by people, I’m sure.  Men like father must say it.

Elizabeth: Have you put the lavender in the rooms?

Bridget: No.  I’ll take it now.

(She takes a tray from the window and goes out.)

Mrs. Cromwell: I don’t know what will happen.  I sometimes think the world isn’t worth quarrelling about at all.  And yet I’m a silly old woman to talk like that.  But Oliver is a brave fellow—­and John, all of them.  I want them to be brave in peace—­that’s the way you think at eighty.  (Reading.) This Mr. Donne is a very good poet, but he’s rather hard to understand.  I suppose that is being eighty, too.  Mr. Herrick is very simple.  John Hampden sent me some copies from a friend who knows Mr. Herrick.  I like them better than John does.  (She takes up a manuscript book and reads:)