BASTON: Who did you vow to?

ANNE: To the inevitability of evolution and the sacredness of man.

BASTON: It sounds a big vow.

ANNE: I got it from an essay of grandfather’s, “The Credo of an Atheist.” You know, I liked what you said just now about uninhabited planets.

BASTON: I can see you’re a real Callifer.

ANNE: Sometimes I wish this planet was uninhabited too—no human beings, only hills and rivers and sky.

BASTON: I rather like human beings.

ANNE: I don’t. They are so untidy. Stomach aches, colds in the head, spots—(BASTON automatically puts up his hand to his sty.) Aunt Sara’s in the garden, snivelling in a deck chair.

BASTON: What a hard child you are.

ANNE: It’s no good being mushy, is it? It’s the truth that matters. And she is snivelling.

BASTON: You could have said “crying.”

ANNE: But crying’s quite a different thing.

BASTON: I expect she’s very fond of your grandfather.

ANNE: Perhaps. Or she may be snivelling for lost love, though it’s not likely after all these years. I call her Aunt Sara, but strictly speaking I shouldn’t, should I, not after she divorced Uncle?

BASTON (ironically): A courtesy title.

ANNE: I don’t understand why she comes here, and not Uncle James.

BASTON (uneasily): I suppose he was too busy to come. Or perhaps his paper couldn’t spare him. And it’s a long way from Nottingham.

ANNE: My school is further than Nottingham. They fetched me.

BASTON: I expect there was some reason.

ANNE: They never told him Grandfather was dying.

BASTON: Nonsense.

ANNE: But I know. They gave me the telegrams to take to the post office. There was one to you and one to Father, even one to her. but not to him. Is he a criminal? That’s a practical question.

BASTON: Of course he isn’t.

ANNE: Or wicked?

BASTON: No, no.

ANNE: Or mad?

BASTON: Of course not.

ANNE (after a pause for thought): Then I was quite right to do what I did.

BASTON: What did you do?

ANNE: I sent him a telegram myself.

BASTON (in a shocked voice): That was very, very wrong of you.

ANNE: Why?

BASTON: To upset everybody at a time like this. With your grandfather dying upstairs.

ANNE: Is Uncle a hunchback? Has he got a face of horror?

BASTON: You’re a silly interfering little girl. I only hope he has the sense not to come. I shall have to warn your grandmother.

ANNE (pondering the word): Warn—?

BASTON: He’s not wanted here. Nobody wants him here.

ANNE (going thoughtfully to the window): I see. I’m sorry. (She goes thoughtfully out through the french windows, passing Sara as she does so.)

Sara is a woman of about thirty-six, good-looking, but carrying with her a sense of disappointment and drift.