She said, if you said is they an answer, I was to say yes, they is. JANE Just a minute. [_She opens note and reads it._ ELLA I must say she didn’t lose much time. JANE (_after reading note_) Poor Sadie! Wait, Orin! (_She sits at table and takes checkbook from the drawer and writes_) Just take this to your mother. ELLA You don’t mean you’re goin’ to---- JANE Be quiet, Ella. Here, Orin. (_She hands him check_) Don’t lose it, and run along. ORIN All right. Mum said we was goin’ to have dinner early, and go to a movie! Good night. JANE (_again writing in checkbook_) Good night. [_Orin exits._ ELLA So you sent her her rent money, after all? JANE Here! [_She rises and hands a check to Ella._ ELLA What’s that? JANE Two hundred dollars. You can try that dressmaking business if you want to, Ella. ELLA [_Looks at check._ Two hundred dollars! JANE You needn’t thank me. ELLA That ain’t it. I was just wonderin’ what’s come over you all of a sudden. [_Ben enters._ JANE It’s my birthday, that’s all. Did you know it was my birthday, Ben? BEN (_carelessly_) Is it? I shoveled them damned paths! [_He crosses and sits by fire._ JANE Ella’s going into the dressmaking business, Ben. BEN (_moodily_) What of it? ELLA That’s what I say. It ain’t much of a business. [_She exits at right; outside it grows to dusk._ JANE Are you tired? BEN Maybe. [_He stretches his feet out toward fire._ JANE You’ve done a lot of work to-day. BEN And every day. JANE I don’t suppose you know how much good it’s done you, how well you look! BEN Beauty’s only skin deep. JANE Folks change, even in a few weeks, outside and in. Hard work don’t hurt anybody. BEN I got chilblains on my feet. The damned shoes are stiffer than they ever was. JANE Icebound, you said. Maybe it don’t have to be like that. Sometimes, just lately, it’s seemed to me that if folks would try, things needn’t be so bad. All of ’em try, I mean, for themselves, and for everybody else. BEN If I was you, I’d go out somewheres and hire a hall. JANE If you’d put some pork fat on those shoes to-night, your feet wouldn’t hurt so bad. BEN Maybe. [_He sits looking moodily into the fire. After a moment’s hesitation, Jane crosses and sits in the chair beside his, the evening shadows deepen around them but the glow from the fire lights their faces._ JANE I’m lonesome to-night. We always made a lot of birthdays when I was a girl. BEN Some do. JANE Your mother didn’t. She found me once trying, the day I was fifteen. I remember how she laughed at me. BEN All the Jordans have got a sense of humor. JANE She wasn’t a Jordan, not until she married your father. BEN When a woman marries into a family, she mostly shuts her eyes and jumps in all over. JANE Your mother was the best of the whole lot of you. Anyway, I think so. BEN