MOTHER BAUMERT
[In a querulous, feeble voice, as the girls stop weaving and bend over their webs.] Got to make knots again already, have you?
EMMA
[The elder of the two girls, about twenty-two, tying a broken thread] It's the plagueyest web, this!
BERTHA
[Fifteen.] Yes, it's real bad yarn they've given us this time.
EMMA
What can have happened to father? He's been away since nine.
MOTHER BAUMERT
That he has! yes. Where in the wide world c'n he be?