Christy takes the window bar out of its damps, and puts it aside; then opens the shutter, showing the grey morning.  Mrs. Dudgeon takes the sconce from the mantelshelf; blows out the candle; extinguishes the snuff by pinching it with her fingers, first licking them for the purpose; and replaces the sconce on the shelf.

Christy (looking through the window).  Here’s the minister’s wife.

Mrs. Dudgeon (displeased).  What!  Is she coming here?

Christy.  Yes.

Mrs. Dudgeon.  What does she want troubling me at this hour, before I’m properly dressed to receive people?

Christy.  You’d better ask her.

Mrs. Dudgeon (threateningly).  You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head. (He goes sulkily towards the door.  She comes after him, plying him with instructions.) Tell that girl to come to me as soon as she’s had her breakfast.  And tell her to make herself fit to be seen before the people. (Christy goes out and slams the door in her face.) Nice manners, that! (Someone knocks at the house door:  she turns and cries inhospitably.) Come in. (Judith Anderson, the minister’s wife, comes in.  Judith is more than twenty years younger than her husband, though she will never be as young as he in vitality.  She is pretty and proper and ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an opinion of herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which serves her instead of strength.  She has a pretty taste in dress, and in her face the pretty lines of a sentimental character formed by dreams.  Even her little self-complacency is pretty, like a child’s vanity.  Rather a pathetic creature to any sympathetic observer who knows how rough a place the world is.  One feels, on the whole, that Anderson might have chosen worse, and that she, needing protection, could not have chosen better.) Oh, it’s you, is it, Mrs. Anderson?

Judith (very politely—­almost patronizingly).  Yes.  Can I do anything for you, Mrs. Dudgeon?  Can I help to get the place ready before they come to read the will?

Mrs. Dudgeon (stiffly).  Thank you, Mrs. Anderson, my house is always ready for anyone to come into.

Mrs. Anderson (with complacent amiability).  Yes, indeed it is.  Perhaps you had rather I did not intrude on you just now.

Mrs. Dudgeon.  Oh, one more or less will make no difference this morning, Mrs. Anderson.  Now that you’re here, you’d better stay.  If you wouldn’t mind shutting the door! (Judith smiles, implying “How stupid of me” and shuts it with an exasperating air of doing something pretty and becoming.) That’s better.  I must go and tidy myself a bit.  I suppose you don’t mind stopping here to receive anyone that comes until I’m ready.

Judith (graciously giving her leave).  Oh yes, certainly.  Leave them to me, Mrs. Dudgeon; and take your time. (She hangs her cloak and bonnet on the rack.)