THE WIDOWING OF MRS. HOLROYD
THE FIRST ACT
SCENE I
The kitchen of a miner’s small cottage. On the left is the fireplace, with a deep, full red fire. At the hack is a white-curtained window, and beside it the outer door of the room. On the right, two white wooden stairs intrude into the kitchen below the closed stairfoot door. On the left, another door.
The room is furnished with a chintz-backed sofa under the window, a glass-knobbed painted dresser on the right, and in the centre, toward the fire, a table with a red and blue check tablecloth. On one side of the hearth is a wooden rocking-chair, on the other an armchair of round staves. An unlighted copper-shaded lamp hangs from the raftered ceiling. It is dark twilight, with the room full of warm fireglow. A woman enters from the outer door. As she leaves the door open behind her, the colliery rail cam be seen not far from the threshold, and, away back, the headstocks of a pit.
The woman is tall and voluptuously built. She carries a basket heaped full of washing, which she has just taken from the clotheslines outside. Setting down the basket heavily, she feels among the clothes.