Captain Price: Retired sea-captain, big, bluff, and hearty, with white hair and big white mustachios, rather untidy as to dress. Age, about 68.
Cyrus Price: His son, weak and neat-looking, very thin and of sandy complexion. Age, about 35.
Mrs. North: Sprightly, pretty, white-haired little lady of about 65. Always in black silk.
Miss North: Her daughter, nervous and shy, but truthful with a mania for taking care of her mother and no knowledge of how to wear her clothes; about 40.
Mrs. Gussie Price: A stout, colorless blond, a weeping, vividly gowned lady, who rules her husband, Cyrus, through her tears. Age, about 30.
Flora: A colored maid.
Stage setting: A drawing-room with a door on either side of the back, leading into the long front hall. A window at the right, looking into the street. Between the window and the door, a stuffed armchair, a hair-cloth sofa. Between the doors, under a mantel-shelf, a Franklin stove, on either side of which, but a little down stage, are two rockers just alike. To the left and back, grand piano. To the left, front, another big chair. Hassocks; and a knit shawl on almost every chair. The only ornament on the shelf is a stuffed bird in a glass case.
ACT I
Miss North is discovered in a very much starched gown, big apron, dusting-cap, and gloves; arranging the chairs more evenly and dusting. Expression of heavy responsibility in her face and manner.
Flora announces Mrs. Price, who enters—right door—at once. Though Mary explains she is busy, Mrs. Price stays. Sits on the sofa. Mary in rocking-chair to left of stove. Dialogue in which Mary explains she is determined to let her mother end life happily in her native town and she expects her to arrive any moment. Mrs. Price offers assistance in fixing up the house and begins to gossip about the fact that her father-in-law, the Captain, who lives in the Price house just across the street, tried to elope with Mrs. North when she was eighteen. Mary becomes very indignant, but sees her mother through the window and dismisses Mrs. Price politely but not sweetly. Exit Mrs. Price by the right door, Mary by the left. Enter Mrs. North by the right and Mary is seen hurrying by the right door with a small wooden chair in her hand.