Lydia [eagerly]. Oh, just—just to be changing. Don't you think it is an improvement?
Harriet [coldly]. It does very well. But I prefer it as it was. You know yourself that this room has never been changed since your grandfather died. [Piously.] And as long as I am mistress in this house, it shall remain exactly as he liked it.
[Lydia looks spitefully at the portrait over the rear door.]
Harriet [stepping to the window to the left of the fire-place and lowering the curtain to the middle of the frame.] The court house will be done before your brother is well enough to come downstairs, Lydia. How astonished he will be to see it completed.
Lydia. Yes. But he would much rather watch while it is being done.
Harriet. Well naturally. But from upstairs you can't see through the leaves of the maple tree. Why, Lydia, there isn't another tree for miles around with such marvelous foliage. Great-grandfather Wilde did not know, when he set out a sapling, that the county court house was to be built—almost in its very shadow.
Lydia. You always did admire any kind of a family tree.
Harriet [as if speaking to an unruly child]. If Great-grandfather Wilde heard you say that—
Lydia [with a sudden flash of spirit which dies almost before she ceases to speak]. If Great-grandfather Wilde heard me say that. It may be he would have the excellent sense to come back and chop off a limb or two, so that Joe could have sunlight in that little dark room up there, and see out.
Harriet [lifting her left hand and letting it sink upon her knee with the air of one who has suffered much, but can suffer more]. Lydia, my dear child, I am not responsible for your disposition this lovely morning. Moreover, this is a fruitless—