George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

board, which she locks, pocketing the key carefully.)
CHRISTY 
(lingering at the fire). You’d better put the inkstand
instead, for the lawyer.
Mss. DUDGEON
. That’s no answer to make to me, sir. Go
and do as you’re told. (Christy turns sullenly to obey.) Stop:
take down that shutter before you go, and let the daylight
in: you can’t expect me to do all the heavy work of the house
with a great heavy lout like you idling about.
Christy takes the window bar out of its damps, and puts it aside;
then opens the shutter, showing the grey morning. Mrs. Dud-
geon takes the sconce from the mantelshelf; blows out the candle;
extinguishes the snuff by pinching it with her fingers, first lick-
ing them for the purpose; and replaces the sconce on the shelf.
CHRISTY 
(looking through the window). Here’s the minister’s
wife.

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12
The Devil’s Disciple
MRS. DUDGEON 
(displeased). What! Is she coming here?
CHRISTY
. Yes.
MRS. DUDGEON
. What does she want troubling me at
this hour, before I’m properly dressed to receive people?
CHRISTY
. You’d better ask her.
MRS. DUDGEON 
(threateningly). You’d better keep a civil
tongue in your head. (He goes sulkily towards the door. She
comes after him, plying him with instructions.) Tell that girl to
come to me as soon as she’s had her breakfast. And  tell her
to make herself fit to be seen before the people. (Christy goes
out and slams the door in her face.) Nice  manners, that! (Some-
one knocks at the house door: she turns and cries inhospitably.)
Come in. (Judith Anderson, the  minister’s wife, comes in. Judith
is more than twenty years  younger than her husband, though
she will never be as young as he in vitality. She is pretty and
proper and ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an
opinion of herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assur-
ance which serves her instead of strength. She has a pretty taste
in dress, and in her face the pretty lines of a sentimental charac-
ter formed by dreams. Even her little self-complacency is pretty,
like a child’s vanity. Rather a pathetic creature to any sympa-
thetic observer who knows how rough a place the world is. One
feels, on the whole, that Anderson might have chosen worse, and
that she, needing protection, could not have chosen better.) Oh,
it’s you, is it, Mrs. Anderson?
JUDITH 
(very politely—almost patronizingly). Yes. Can I do
anything for you, Mrs. Dudgeon? Can I help to get the place
ready before they come to read the will?
MRS. DUDGEON 
(stiffly). Thank you, Mrs. Anderson, my
house is always ready for anyone to come into.
MRS. ANDERSON 
(with complacent amiability). Yes, in-
deed it is. Perhaps you had rather I did not intrude on you
just now.
MRS. DUDGEON
. Oh, one more or less will make no dif-
ference this morning, Mrs. Anderson. Now that you’re here,
you’d better stay. If you wouldn’t mind shutting the door!
(Judith smiles, implying “How stupid of me” and shuts it with
an exasperating air of doing something pretty and becoming.)
That’s better. I must go and tidy myself a bit. I suppose you
don’t mind stopping here to receive anyone that comes until
I’m ready.
JUDITH 
(graciously giving her leave). Oh yes, certainly. Leave
them to me, Mrs. Dudgeon; and take your time. (She hangs
her cloak and bonnet on the rack.)

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13
GB Shaw
MRS. DUDGEON 
(half sneering). I thought that would be
more in your way than getting the house ready. (Essie comes