Dresser. Yes, dreams come true sometimes—I know that all right—but not the nice ones.
[Exeunt R.]
SCENE III
[DAUGHTER gives a nod out of the window; LISE enters. She wears a tennis costume quite white, and a white hat.]
Lise. Have they gone?
Daughter. Yes; but they’re soon coming back.
Lise. Well, what did your mother say?
Daughter. I haven’t even had the pluck to ask her. She was in such a temper.
Lise. Poor Helen! So you Can’t come with us on the excursion? And I was looking forward to it so much. If you only knew how fond I am of you. [Kisses her.]
Daughter. I you only knew, dear, what these days have meant to me since I’ve made your acquaintance and visited your house—have meant to a girl like me, who’s never mixed with decent people in her whole life. Just think what it must have been for me. Up to the present I’ve been living in a den where the air was foul, where shady, mysterious people came in and out, who spied and brawled and wrangled, where I have never heard a kind word, much less ever got a caress, and where my soul was watched like a prisoner. Oh, I’m talking like this about my mother, and it hurts me! And you will only despise me for it.