ACT II
A few months later. The hour is dusk. A basement apartment lower than street level. There are four doors, one leading in from the street, one leading to a back yard, one to a kitchen, another to a bedroom. The room is large and serves as a combined living room and place of business for a dog specialist. Some of the furniture of the old place is here. There is a shelf displaying packages of dog biscuit, muzzles, etc. The walls are decorated with pictures of dogs and glaring advertisements of dog goods, especially insecticides. There is a large homemade sign:
I CLIP, TRIM, PLUCK, WASH AND EXTERMINATE.
At one side is Martin's sketching table, and on wall near it some of his drawings.
TIPPY is kneeling on the floor beside a wash-tub, bathing a terrier. He talks to it gently, soothingly, all through following scene.
MARTIN, with a green eyeshade, is working on a sketch under a table lamp.
During scene TIPPY takes dog out of tub and begins drying him with a Turkish towel. Has large stack of clean folded towels and uses one after the other.
MARTIN. [As he sketches.] Your persistent love of Class of '29 reunions seems to me more admirable than politic.
TIPPY. It will go off all right if you refrain from talking politics.