MRS. POTTER: You was always my favourite, Master James. It wasn’t any fault of yours what happened. You were a dear boy to me. If your father had let you alone—

JAMES: I haven’t asked you for anything in thirty years, but I’m begging you now—

Mrs. Potter looks at Mrs. Callifer.

MRS. POTTER: But your mother—

MRS. CALLIFER: All right. I’ll tell you. You had an accident in the potting shed.

JAMES: An accident?

MRS. CALLIFER: You slipped and fell. You were unconscious when Potter found you. And afterwards—it made you strange.

JAMES: Mad?

MRS. CALLIFER: Not exactly mad. You didn’t get on with your father. Family life wasn’t good for you.

JAMES: Is that all?

MRS. CALLIFER: All except Potter’s fairy stories.

JAMES: Then I want the fairy stories.

MRS. POTTER: They weren’t fairy stories, Mrs. Callifer. Potter was no liar. Your husband knew that. That’s why he sent him away.

MRS. CALLIFER: He was too old for the work. My husband gave him a good pension.

MRS. POTTER: Oh, it was a good pension, but his heart was in his garden, and it killed him.

MRS. CALLIFER: He spread stories.

MRS. POTTER: It was the truth.

MRS. CALLIFER: How could it be?

MRS. POTTER: It’s not the first time. There was Lazarus. They buried him.

ANNE: Who was Lazarus?

MRS. CALLIFER: Someone in a book.

MRS. POTTER (angrily): A book you Callifers aren’t allowed to read. All right. I’ll tell you how it was, Master James. It was dinnertime. Potter was late. Near two o’clock. I knew something was wrong as soon as he came in. He had a coffin face. It was bad for Potter because he found you first.

JAMES: He found me?

MRS. POTTER: He lifted you down, poor boy.

JAMES: Lifted me— (He sits down at the desk.)

MRS. POTTER: You were hanging there, sir. You’d used a cord from the playroom. He cut you down.

JAMES: Was I—

MRS. POTTER: There wasn’t any life in you, sir.

MRS. CALLIFER: No! (She makes a motion of protest.)

MRS. POTTER: Forgive me, ma’am, but it’s what Potter said.

JAMES: (as though it were a real question, and he half expects the answer to be no): But I am here? This is my room.

MRS. POTTER: Potter did all he could. He was a great swimmer once, sir, and he knew all about artificial respirationing. It wasn’t any use, he said. Your heart was stopped. He was always a truthful man.

JAMES: Last week I cut my hand. It bled.

MRS. POTTER: Potter left the door open, and he looked up and saw your uncle was there. “Master James has killed himself,” Potter said. You were stretched out there on the ground and you had no more breath, Potter said, than a dead fish.