28
MRS. HOLROYD
[ACT I
Clara (struggling)
- Hands off!
- [She fetches him a sharp slap across the face. Mrs. Holroyd is heard coming downstairs. Clara, released, sits down, smoothing herself. Holroyd looks evil. He goes out to the door.
Clara (to Mrs. Holroyd, penitently)
- I don’t know what you think of us, I ’m sure.
Mrs. Holroyd
- I think nothing at all.
Clara (bubbling)
- So you fix your thoughts elsewhere, do you? (Suddenly changing to seriousness) No, but I have been awful to-night.
Mrs. Holroyd (contralto, emphatic)
- I don’t want to know anything about you. I shall be glad when you ’ll go.
Clara
- Turning-out time, Laura.
Laura (turtling)
- I ’m sorry, I ’m sure.
Clara
- Never mind. But as true as I ’m here, missis, I should never ha’ come if I ’d thought. But I had a drop—it all started with your husband sayin’ he was n’t a married man.
Laura (laughing and wiping her eyes)
- I ’ve never knowed her to go off like it—it ’s after the time she ’s had.
Clara
- You know, my husband was a brute to me—an’ I was in bed three month after he died. He was a
