ROO: Somethin’ we arranged, that’s all.

OLIVE: About the kewpies? [To NANCY] Tell me?

NANCY: Anyone could see there’d be a shortage, stuff like that in wartime. The day Roo joined the army, he bought half a dozen of them at a joke shop in the city—

OLIVE: [delightedly] So that was how?

ROO shrugs helplessly. NANCY maintains the initiative.

NANCY: —half a dozen I’ve had stashed away—handing them over to him, one by one—

OLIVE: [as before] Why didn’t you tell me?

NANCY: Nothing odd about it, Olive, nothin’ special—just Roo thinking up ahead a bit. And the doll he gave you this year was the last of them.

OLIVE turns in question, aware of something implicit in the statement.

If the war had gone on for another year—

OLIVE: [triumphantly] But it didn’t!

NANCY: Could have easy, though. And if it had—

OLIVE: But don’t you see? ’S what I’m tryin’ to say.

She includes the three of them in a fervent appeal.

All along the line—more than lucky—things have turned out right for us. The war, it could’ve messed us up so many ways. Think of all the blokes who didn’t get through—Dickie Pouncett and that ship of his—the prisoners of war who didn’t make it up there with the Japanese—and people all over the world who got parted and lost track of one another—there’s a thousand things, a million, could’ve gone wrong. But they didn’t—that’s the point.

She moves, shining-eyed, to join ROO.

War didn’t go on for another year—and the boys were here on leave when the whole thing ended—we couldn’t have had things better for us, more the way we wanted.

She moves towards ROO.

All the time that I was growin’ up, Mum used to drive me crazy with her hand of Providence. Tellin’ me how grateful I should be. Well, now I am.

She wraps her arms around ROO.

I think us bein’ here together is the hand of Providence. Clear and—clear as it could be.

She buries her head again in ROO’s chest, holding him close on a wave of sheer thankfulness.

ROO: [wrapping his arms around her, gruffly] Well—hand of Providence is good enough for me, I reckon.

He addresses NANCY over OLIVE’s head.

Anyone who wants to argue that tonight is gunna have to speak up for themselves.

NANCY faces a moment of decision, held by both ROO’s gaze and BARNEY’s, before she turns abruptly and moves for the wall cupboard. OLIVE, sensing something amiss, starts to pull away from ROO on NANCY’s move. He distracts her, however, by swiftly kissing her, claiming her attention with a certain amount of manufactured enthusiasm.

Now, how about these celebrations? Get them off the ground, we oughta check ’em over.

As she starts to question: