Serv. Since the day how we have run,
Now we shall know,
Just where each girl is going to go.
Now our journey's o'er and here we rest with you at last,
After many a mile so long and lone is over past.
(Servants scatter about stage, some lying down as if to rest, as Lionel and Plunket enter. They come on talking. Plunket is dressed as a peasant farmer and carries a whip. Lionel is dressed as a gentleman, but plainly.)
Plunket. Here is a jolly howdoyoudo. What a clatter they make! The farmers are all going to engage servants for the coming year out of this crowd of chattering hussies. It is a good thing to take your time to choose, though, for once the bargain is made you have to stick to it for at least a year. What do you say, Lionel? Have you picked out your Betsy Ann?
Lionel. Betsy Ann—what do you mean? (He speaks absently, slowly, and his demeanor throughout is one of dreamy abstraction. He is very grave and pensive, altogether a young man who would be likely to take a love affair very seriously and perhaps lose his mental balance temporarily over it.)
Plun. I mean our serving girl. You know mother put it in her will that we must keep up the farm together. So now like two good housewives we must fly around and choose a maid. Her name may be Sally or Katy or Jane, but I shall call her Betsy Ann! (Laughs.)
Lio. I shall always remember your dear mother and be grateful.
Plun. Yes, she was a good woman and a good mother, aye, a good manager, too. She knew how to make the maids attend to their work.
Lio. But she was kind. She was always so kind to me.
Plun. Yes, she loved you. If you had been her own child she could not have tended you more anxiously. You were a mere baby when your father died and left you in our care. No one could help trying to make up your loss to you, somehow. If I'd a mind I might have been jealous of you. I was always the one who got the scoldings. I suppose mother owed them to me, for I was her own naughty boy!
Lio. You have always been a real brother to me, Plunket. No helpless child could have had a happier fate than to find home with you.