Daniel. Nicer? (He looks at his niece, and then begins to divine the way her feelings lie.) Well, of course we have all our opinions on these things you know, Mary, but Alick—well, after all there's many a worse fellow than Alick, isn't there? (Mary does not answer, but puts her head close to her uncle.) Ah, yes.
Mary (suddenly). Uncle! Do you know what has happened? I heard father proposing to Miss McMinn!
Daniel (groaning). Oh my! I knew it would happen! I knew it would happen! When? Where?
Mary. In here. I wanted to slip in quietly after leaving Alick down the loaning when I overheard the voices. It was father and Miss McMinn. She was telling him how she had saved five pounds on butter last half year, and ten pounds on eggs this year, and then father asked her to marry him. I knocked at the door out of divilment, and she just pitched herself at him. I—I'm not going to stay in the house with that woman. I'd sooner marry Alick McCready.
Daniel (despairingly). I would myself. I daren't—I couldn't face the look of that woman in the mornings.
Mary. It's all right for you to talk, uncle. You'll be working away at your inventions, and that sort of thing, and will have nothing much to do with her, but I'd be under her thumb all the time. And I hate her, and I know she hates me. (Tearfully.) And then the way father talks about her being such a fine housekeeper, and about the waste that goes on in this house, it nearly makes me cry, just because I have been a bit careless maybe. But I could manage a house every bit as well as she could, and I'd show father that if I only got another chance. Couldn't I uncle?
Daniel (soothingly). And far better, Mary. Far better.
Mary. And you could do far more at your invention if you only got a chance. Couldn't you, uncle?
Daniel. No doubt about it, Mary. None. I never got much of a chance here.