STRANGER. No; I don't like sitting there. People are always passing.
MOTHER. Yet I've been sitting here since I was a child, watching life glide past as the river does below. Here, on the road, I've watched the children of men go by, playing, haggling, begging, cursing and dancing. I love this seat and I love the river below, though it does much damage every year and washes away the property we inherited. Last spring it carried our whole hay crop off, so that we had to sell our beasts. The property's lost half its value in the last few years, and when the lake in the mountains has reached its new level and the swamp's been drained into the river, the water will rise till it washes the house away. We've been at law about it for ten years, and we've lost every appeal; so we shall be destroyed. It's as inevitable as fate.
STRANGER. Fate's not inevitable.
MOTHER. Beware, if you think to fight it.
STRANGER. I've done so already.
MOTHER. There you go again! You learn nothing from the chastisement of Providence.
STRANGER. Oh yes. I've learned to hate. Can one love what does evil?
MOTHER. I've little learning, as you know; but I read yesterday in an encyclopaedia that the Eumenides are not evilly disposed.
STRANGER. That's true; but it's a lie they're friendly. I only know one friendly fury. My own!
MOTHER. Can you call Ingeborg a fury?