Mrs. Curwen: “Or birds in a cage, if you want a more pleasing image.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “How are you going to get us out, Edward?”
Roberts: “We don’t know yet. But keep quiet”—
Miller: “Keep quiet! Great heavens! we’re afraid to stir a finger. Now don’t say ‘keep quiet’ any more, for we can’t stand it.”
Lawton: “He’s in open rebellion. What are you going to do, Roberts?”
Roberts, rising and scratching his head: “Well, I don’t know yet. We might break a hole in the roof.”
Lawton: “Ah, I don’t think that would do. Besides you’d have to get a carpenter.”
Roberts: “That’s true. And it would make a racket, and alarm the house”—staring desperately at the grated doorway of the shaft. “If I could only find an elevator man—an elevator builder! But of course they all live in the suburbs, and they’re keeping Christmas, and it would take too long, anyway.”
Bemis: “Hadn’t you better send for the police? It seems to me it’s a case for the authorities.”
Lawton: “Ah, there speaks the Europeanized mind! They always leave the initiative to the authorities. Go out and sound the fire-alarm, Roberts. It’s a case for the Fire Department.”