_At back center folding doors, now partly open, lead to dining room. In this room may be seen the dining table, back of the table a window looking out on to the farm yard, now deep in midwinter snow. At right is an open fireplace with a log fire. Below fireplace a door to hall. Up left door to small vestibule in which is the outside door. Down left a window overlooking a snowbound countryside. The clock above the fireplace is set for quarter past four. Several straight-backed chairs and a woodbox by fireplaces. A sewing table and lamp at center. A sewing machine near window at left. A wall cupboard on the wall right of the doors to the dining room. An old sofa down left, two chairs at right. When the door at left, in vestibule, is opened, one may see a path up to the door, between two walls of snow._ _Discovered: Ella sits right at sewing machine, hemming some rough towels. Orin and Nettie are by fireplace. Sadie sits right of center. Sadie and Orin are dressed for outdoors. Nettie’s coat, hat and overshoes are on a hat-rack by door at left. Orin, as the curtain goes up, is putting a log on the fire._ SADIE (_acidly to Ella_) Why shouldn’t he put wood on the fire if he wants to? ELLA (_at sewing machine_) Because it ain’t your wood. SADIE No, it’s _hers_! Everything is hers! ELLA And maybe she just don’t know it. NETTIE (_at fireplace_) Ah! (_She bends closer to the fire as the log blazes up_) I do love a good fire! Oh it’s nice to be warm! SADIE There’s somethin’ sensual about it. NETTIE Mother told me that the next time you started talkin’ indecent I was to leave the room. SADIE Tell your mother I don’t wonder she’s sort of worried about you. I’d be if you was _my_ daughter. ELLA I don’t see why you can’t let Nettie alone! NETTIE She’s always picking on me, Aunt Ella! To hear her talk anybody would think I was terrible. SADIE I know more about what’s going on than some folks think I do. NETTIE Then you know a lot. I heard Horace Bevins say a week ago that he didn’t know as it was any use tryin’ to have a Masonic Lodge in the same town as you. SADIE They never was a Bevins yet didn’t have his tongue hung from the middle; the day his mother was married she answered both the responses. ORIN Mum! Mum! Shall I take my coat off; are we going to stay, Mum? SADIE No, we ain’t going to stay. I just want to see Cousin Jane for a minute. ELLA She’s in the kitchen with Hannah. SADIE Watchin’ her, I bet! I wonder Hannah puts up with it. ELLA If you was to live with Jane for a spell, I guess you’d find you had a plenty to put up with. SADIE It’s enough to make the Jordans turn in their graves, all of ’em at once. ELLA I guess all she’d say would be, “Let ’em if it seemed to make ’em any more comfortable.” [_Jane enters. She has apron on and some towels over her arm._ JANE Are those towels finished? ELLA