JOHN

O, I don’t know.  The East or some such place.  I’ve often heard people speak of it, and somehow it seemed so. . .

MARY

The East, John?  Not the East.  I don’t think the East somehow is quite respectable.

JOHN

O well, it’s all right, I never went, and never shall go now.  It doesn’t matter.

Mary [the photographs catching her eye]

O, John, I meant to tell you.  Such a dreadful thing happened.

JOHN

What, Mary?

MARY

Well, Liza was dusting the photographs, and when she came to Jane’s she says she hadn’t really begun to dust it, only looked at it, and it fell down, and that bit of glass is broken right out of it.

JOHN

Ask her not to look at it so hard another time.

MARY

O, what do you mean, John?

JOHN

Well, that’s how she broke it; she said so, and as I know you believe in Liza . . .

MARY

Well, I can’t think she’d tell a lie, John.

JOHN

No, of course not.  But she mustn’t look so hard another time.

MARY

And it’s poor little Jane’s photograph.  She will feel it so.

JOHN

O, that’s all right, we’ll get it mended.

MARY

Still, it’s a dreadful thing to have happened.

JOHN

We’ll get it mended, and if Jane is unhappy about it she can have Alice’s frame.  Alice is too young to notice it.

MARY

She isn’t, John.  She’d notice it quick.

JOHN

Well, George, then.

Mary [looking at photo thoughtfully]

Well, perhaps George might give up his frame.

JOHN

Yes, tell Liza to change it.  Why not make her do it now?

MARY

Not to-day, John.  Not on a Sunday.  She shall do it to-morrow by the time you get back from the office.

JOHN

All right.  It might have been worse.

MARY