CHRISTY [taking off his hat and sha

CHRISTY [taking off his hat and shawl
and going to the rack to hang them up.] The
minister is to break the news to you. He’ll be
here presently.
MRS. DUDGEON. Break what news?
CHRISTY [standing on tiptoe, from boyish
habit, to hang his hat up, though he is quite
tall enough to reach the peg, and speaking
with callous placidity, considering the nature
of the announcement.] Father’s dead too.
MRS. DUDGEON [stupent.] Your father!
CHRISTY [sulkily, coming back to the fire
and warming himself again, attending much
more to the fire than to his mother.] Well, it’s
not my fault. When we got to Nevinstown we
found him ill in bed. He didn’t know us at
first. The minister sat up with him and sent
me away. He died in the night.
MRS. DUDGEON [bursting into dry an-
gry tears.] Well, I do think this is hard on
me—very hard on me. His brother, that was a
disgrace to us all his life, gets hanged on the
public gallows as a rebel; and your father, in-
stead of staying at home where his duty was,
with his own family, goes after him and dies,
leaving everything on my shoulders. After sending this girl to me to take care of, too!
[She plucks her shawl vexedly over her ears.]
It’s sinful, so it is; downright sinful.
CHRISTY [with a slow, bovine cheerful-
ness, after a pause.] I think it’s going to be
a fine morning, after all.
MRS. DUDGEON [railing at him.] A
fine morning! And your father newly dead!
Where’s your feelings, child?
CHRISTY [obstinately.] Well, I didn’t
mean any harm. I suppose a man may make a
remark about the weather even if his father’s
dead.
MRS. DUDGEON [bitterly.] A nice comfort
my children are to me! One son a fool, and the
other a lost sinner that’s left his home to live
with smugglers and gypsies and villains, the
scum of the earth!
Someone knocks.
CHRISTY [without moving.] That’s the
minister.
MRS. DUDGEON [sharply.] Well, aren’t
you going to let Mr. Anderson in?
Christy goes sheepishly to the door. Mrs.
Dudgeon buries her face in her hands, as it
is her duty as a widow to be overcome with
grief. Christy opens the door, and admits the
minister, Anthony Anderson, a shrewd, ge-
nial, ready Presbyterian divine of about 50,
with something of the authority of his profes-
sion in his bearing. But it is an altogether
secular authority, sweetened by a conciliatory,
sensible manner not at all suggestive of a
quite thorough-going other-worldliness. He is
a strong, healthy man, too, with a thick, san- guine neck; and his keen, cheerful mouth cuts
into somewhat fleshy corners. No doubt an ex-
cellent parson, but still a man capable of mak-
ing the most of this world, and perhaps a lit-
tle apologetically conscious of getting on better
with it than a sound Presbyterian ought.
ANDERSON [to Christy, at the door, look-
ing at Mrs. Dudgeon whilst he takes off his
cloak.] Have you told her?
CHRISTY. She made me. [He shuts the
door; yawns; and loafs across to the sofa where
he sits down and presently drops off to sleep.]
Anderson looks compassionately at Mrs.
Dudgeon. Then he hangs his cloak and hat
on the rack. Mrs. Dudgeon dries her eyes and
looks up at him.
ANDERSON. Sister: the Lord has laid his
hand very heavily upon you.
MRS. DUDGEON [with intensely recalci-
trant resignation.] It’s His will, I suppose; and
I must bow to it. But I do think it hard. What
call had Timothy to go to Springtown, and re-
mind everybody that he belonged to a man
that was being hanged?—and [spitefully] that
deserved it, if ever a man did.
ANDERSON [gently.] They were brothers