CARTER [straightening out his coat]: I thought it might look better to get on my Sunday clothes for the meeting, as you might say, Miss Gorodna. Being as I'm chairman it might look more dignified; kind o' help give a kind of authority, maybe.
NORA [absently, not looking up]: Yes.
CARTER [looking at his watch and at the clock again]: It ought to be wound up for meetings. [He steps upon a chair; moves the hands of clock.] There, doggone it, the key's lost! I believe Mrs. Simpson took that key for their own clock. [He goes to the table; sits, unrolls the typewritten sheets, puts on his spectacles, and studies the sheets in a kind of misery, roughing his hair badly and making sounds of moaning.] Miss Gorodna, can you make this figure out here for me? Does that mean profits—or what?
NORA: Oh, no; that's only an amount carried over.
CARTER: They's so many little puzzlin' things in this bookkeeper's report. I don't believe he understands it himself. I don't see how he expects me to read that to the meeting. Some parts I can't make head or tail of. Others it looks like he's got the words jest changed round.
NORA: Oh, we'll work it all out at the meeting, Mr. Carter!
CARTER: My, we got a lot to work out at this meeting.
NORA: We'll do it, comrade!
CARTER [cheering up]: Sure! Sure we will! It's wonderful what a meeting does; I'm always forgettin' all we got to do is vote and then the trouble's over.
[Instantly upon this a loud squabbling and women's voices are
heard outside, in the factory.]