s his back on
Paddy scornfully._] Aw, yuh make me sick! Yuh don't belong! [_He
strides out the door in rear. Paddy hums to himself, blinking
drowsily._]

[_Curtain_]

SCENE II

SCENE--Two days out. A section of the promenade deck. MILDRED DOUGLAS
and her aunt are discovered reclining in deck chairs. The former is a
girl of twenty, slender, delicate, with a pale, pretty face marred by a
self-conscious expression of disdainful superiority. She looks fretful,
nervous and discontented, bored by her own anemia. Her aunt is a
pompous and proud--and fat--old lady. She is a type even to the point
of a double chin and lorgnettes. She is dressed pretentiously, as if
afraid her face alone would never indicate her position in life.
MILDRED is dressed all in white.

The impression to be conveyed by this scene is one of the beautiful,
vivid life of the sea all about--sunshine on the deck in a great flood,
the fresh sea wind blowing across it. In the midst of this, these two
incongruous, artificial figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder
like a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge, the younger looking as
if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived,
so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the
artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending.

MILDRED--[_Looking up with affected dreaminess._] How the black smoke
swirls back against the sky! Is it not beautiful?

AUNT--[_Without looking up._] I dislike smoke of any kind.

MILDRED--My great-grandmother smoked a pipe--a clay pipe.

AUNT--[_Ruffling._] Vulgar!

MILDRED--She was too distant a relative to be vulgar. Time mellows
pipes.

AUNT--[_Pretending boredom but irritated._] Did the sociology you took
up at college teach you that--to play the ghoul on every possible
occasion, excavating old bones? Why not let your great-grandmother rest
in her grave?

MILDRED--[_Dreamily._] With her pipe beside her--puffing in Paradise.

AUNT--[_With spite._] Yes, you are a natural born ghoul. You are even
getting to look like one, my dear.

MILDRED--[_In a passionless tone._] I detest you, Aunt. [_Looking at
her critically._] Do you know what you remind me of? Of a cold pork
pudding against a background of linoleum tablecloth in the kitchen of
a--but the possibilities are wearisome. [_She closes her eyes._]

AUNT--[_With a bitter laugh._] Merci for your candor. But since I am
and must be your chaperone-