VIVIE. You did.
MRS WARREN. And youll be good to your poor old mother for it, won’t you?
VIVIE. I will, dear. [Kissing her] Good-night.
MRS WARREN [with unction] Blessings on my own dearie darling! a mother’s blessing!
[She embraces her daughter protectingly, instinctively looking upward for divine sanction.]
ACT III
[In the Rectory garden next morning, with the sun shining from a cloudless sky. The garden wall has a five-barred wooden gate, wide enough to admit a carriage, in the middle. Beside the gate hangs a bell on a coiled spring, communicating with a pull outside. The carriage drive comes down the middle of the garden and then swerves to its left, where it ends in a little gravelled circus opposite the Rectory porch. Beyond the gate is seen the dusty high road, parallel with the wall, bounded on the farther side by a strip of turf and an unfenced pine wood. On the lawn, between the house and the drive, is a clipped yew tree, with a garden bench in its shade. On the opposite side the garden is shut in by a box hedge; and there is a little sundial on the turf, with an iron chair near it. A little path leads through the box hedge, behind the sundial.]
[Frank, seated on the chair near the sundial, on which he has placed the morning paper, is reading The Standard. His father comes from the house, red-eyed and shivery, and meets Frank’s eye with misgiving.]
FRANK [looking at his watch] Half-past eleven. Nice hour for a rector to come down to breakfast!
REV. S. Don’t mock, Frank: don’t mock. I am a little—er—[Shivering]—