A hostile, changed and pent-up OLIVE has her eyes on NANCY, and ROO continues with a passing explanation:

Bub’s in trouble over last night. Aunties made her bring back all her bits and pieces.

OLIVE: You don’t have to tell all that to Nancy. Nancy knows already.

NANCY: I do? Know what?

OLIVE: The aunties bein’ mad with Bubba. Telling her she has to toe the line.

NANCY: Honest, hadn’t heard a thing. I just got up—

ROO: ’S true, Ol. We were talking somethin’ else—look, them two mad about the fire? I’ll go in and—

OLIVE: Too late now. They’ve both made up their minds. In any case, it’s not the fire that has them layin’ down the law. It’s some advice that Nancy gave them.

NANCY: Me? I wouldn’t dream of giving them advice—

OLIVE: When you took Bubba home last night?

NANCY: All I did was run her in. I can’t remember even what I said—

OLIVE: Well, they can. Clearly. Word for word. [Distinctly] You told them this house wasn’t any fit place for a fourteen-year-old girl.

NANCY: Never. No, they’re crazy. As though I’d— [dismayed] —oh, hell, yes, I did. I did say that.

BARNEY: You did?

ROO: Told ’em this house wasn’t any fit place—?

NANCY: I was talking last night. How things were in here. You goin’ through your hoops, and Barney hatching alibis, Bubba sayin’ she would be a witness to the police—oh, come on, Ol. Know I’d never say a thing like that for real. All I aimed to do was save Bub bein’ mixed up in that silly mess last night.

OLIVE: Well, you’ve done that. And a whole lot more. You’ve got her barred for good. Her aunties said they’d thought for ages I had too much influence on Bub, and when I asked what that meant, auntie Dee, she told me. How hard it’s been to live next door to somebody whose goings-on are a disgrace—who’s been a scandal to the neighbourhood for years—

ROO makes an instinctive movement towards her, but OLIVE refuses his support.

Oh, don’t fret yourself, it’s nothin’ that I haven’t heard before. Most of the married women living in the street have said it, one time or another, and with some of them it’s been a whole lot worse. What made it hard to take just now was Auntie Maureen chippin’ in to tell me if it hadn’t— [mastering herself] —hadn’t been for Nancy, they’d have stopped Bub comin’ in here long ago.

NANCY: [in dread acceptance] Oh, God.

A shocked unhappy pause as OLIVE steadies herself for a final statement.