CRAIG’S WIFE
121
Craig
- My friends never turned my mother’s house into a tavern.
Mrs. Craig
- They didn’t play poker at your mother’s house till all hours of the morning.
Craig
- Every Thursday night for ten years; till two o’clock, if they felt like it.
Mrs. Craig
- Well, evidently, your mother and I had very different ideas of a house.
Craig
- Very different indeed, Harriet: there was more actual home in one room of my mother’s house than there’d be in all of this if we lived in it a thousand years.
Mrs. Craig
- Why didn’t you stay in it,—if you found it so attractive?
Craig
- Now you’re talking, Harriet; why didn’t I do just that. (He turns away to the left, then turns suddenly back) But, don’t make any mistake that I think you didn’t want my friends here simply because they played cards; you wouldn’t have wanted them if they’d come here to hold prayer meetings. You didn’t want them because, as my aunt says, their visits implied an importance to me that was at variance with your little campaign—the campaign that was to reduce me to one of those wife-ridden sheep that’s afraid to buy a necktie for fear his wife might not approve of it.
- [He goes up towards the front door.
