There’s the door-bell.
Jerry [with fine sarcasm]. Oh, really? Why, I thought it was a cow-bell.
Charlotte [witheringly]. Ha-ha!
Well, he’s gone to the door. He opens it, mumbles something, closes it. Now he’s back.
Jerry. It wasn’t anybody.
Charlotte. It must have been.
Jerry. What?
Charlotte. It couldn’t have rung itself.
Jenny [in disgust]. Oh, gosh, you think that’s funny. [After a pause.] It was a man who wanted 2145. I told him this was 2127, so he went away.
Charlotte is now audibly descending a crickety flight of stairs, and here she is! She’s thirty, and old for her age, just like I told you, shapeless, slack-cheeked, but still defiant. She would fiercely resent the statement that her attractions have declined ninety per cent since her marriage, and in the same breath she would assume that there was a responsibility and shoulder it on her husband. She talks in a pessimistic whine and, with a sort of dowdy egotism, considers herself generally in the right. Frankly, I don’t like her, though she can’t help being what she is.