e huge
skittles into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a
platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests a
fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete
Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon
is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original
model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun alluded to by
Stephen. The parapet has a high step inside which serves as a
seat.

Barbara is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On
her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on
piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which
opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold,
with a fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet
stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of
the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind
the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge conical bombshell, with a
red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same
side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like
the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction.

Cusins arrives by the path from the town.

BARBARA. Well?

CUSINS. Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real.
It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a
hellish one.

BARBARA. Have you found out whether they have done anything for
old Peter Shirley.

CUSINS. They have found him a job as gatekeeper and timekeeper.
He's frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork,
and says he isn't used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid
that he's ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery.

BARBARA. Poor Peter!

Stephen arrives from the town. He carries a fieldglass.

STEPHEN [enthusiastically] Have you two seen the place? Why did
you leave us?

CUSINS. I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and
Barbara wanted to make the men talk.

STEPHEN. Have you found anything discreditable?

CUSINS. No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a
cunning old rascal; but it's all horribly, frightfully,
immorally, unanswerably perfect.

Sarah arrives.

SARAH. Heavens! what a place! [She crosses to the trolley]. Did
you see the nursing home!? [She sits down on the shell].

STEPHEN. Did you see the libraries and schools!?

SARAH. Did you see the ballroom and the banqueting chamber in the
Town Hall!?

STEPHEN. Have you gon