49-60 Start of Act II Flashcards
- Stage Manager: (has been at his accustomed place watching the audience return to their seats).
Three years have gone by.
- Stage Manager: …can’t bound up stairs like they used to, without their heart fluttering a little. All that can happen in a thousand days.
Nature’s been pushing and contriving in other ways, too: a number of young people fell in love and got married. yes, the mountain got bit away a few fractions of an inch; millions of gallons of water went by the mill; and here and there a new home was set up under a roof. Almost everybody in the world gets married - you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.
- Stage Manager: There’s another act coming after this: I reckon you can guess what that’s about.
So: It’s three years later. It’s 1904. It’s July 7th. Just after High School Commencement. That’s the time most of our young people jump up and get married. Soon as they’ve passed their last examinations in solid geometry and Cicero’s Orations, looks like they suddenly feel themselves fit to be married. It’s early morning.
- Stage Manager: The rain looked like curtains being blown along (more thunder).
Hm….it may begin again any minute. (Distant train whistle, looks at pocket watch). There! You can hear the 5:45 for Boston.
- Mrs Gibbs & Mrs Webb: (enter their kitchens & pottering about)
And there’s Mrs Gibbs and Mrs Webb come down to make breakfast, just as though it were an ordinary day.
- Stage Manager: One of ‘em for twenty years, the other for forty - and no summer vacation.
They brought up two children apiece, washed, cleaned the house - and NEVER A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.
- Howie Newsome: Giddap, Bessie!
Here comes Howie Newsome delivering the milk. And there’s Si Crowell delivering the papers like his brother before him.
