Mrs. Joyce, can’t I have my clock back now? I don’t know when to start dinner. IAN [_Consulting dial._] By true time, Annie, it is twenty minutes past six. ELOISE [_Confidentially._] By false time, it is six. ANNIE I have to have my kitchen clock back. [_She looks around for it._ IAN We are done with clocks, Annie. ANNIE You mean I’m _not_ to have it back? ELOISE It lies buried there. ANNIE _Buried?_ My clock buried? It’s not _dead_! IAN It’s dead to us, Annie. ANNIE [_After looking at the grave._] Do I get a new clock? ELOISE We are going to establish a first-hand relation with truth. ANNIE You can’t cook without a clock. IAN A superstition. And anyway--have you not the sun? ANNIE [_After regarding the sun._] I’d rather have a clock than the sun. [_Returns to her clockless kitchen._ IAN That’s what clocks have made of the human mind. EDDY [_Coming to IAN._] Of course, this is all a joke. IAN The attempt to reach truth has always been thought a joke. EDDY But this isn’t any new truth! Why re-reach it? IAN I’m reaching it myself. I’m getting the impact--as of a fresh truth. ALICE But hasn’t it all been worked out for us? IAN And we take it never knowing--never _feeling_--what it is we take. ELOISE And that has made us the mechanical things we are! ANNIE [_Frantically rushes in, peeling an onion._] Starting the sauce for the spaghetti. Fry onions in butter three minutes. [_Wildly regards sun-dial--traces curved line of diagram with knife. Looks despairingly at the sun. Tears back into house._ IAN You get no sense of wonder in looking at a clock. ALICE Yes, do you know, I do. I’ve always thought that clocks were perfectly wonderful. I never could understand how they could run like that. ELOISE I suppose you know they run wrong? EDDY What do you mean “run wrong?” ELOISE Why, you are running by the mean solar time of Philadelphia! And yet here you are in Provincetown where the sun is a very different matter. You have no direct relation with the sun. EDDY That doesn’t seem to worry me much. IAN No, it wouldn’t worry you, Eddy. You’re too perfect a product of a standardized world. [_EDDY bows acknowledgment._ ANNIE [_Rushing out to look at dial._] Add meat, brown seven minutes. [_Measures seven minutes between thumb and finger, holds up this fragment of time made visible and carries it carefully into the house._ EDDY That girl’ll get heart disease. IAN Let her establish a first-hand relation to heat. If she’d take a look at the food instead of the clock--! EDDY Trouble is we have to establish a first-hand relation with the spaghetti. [_EDDY now comes down and regards the sun-dial. Moralizes._] If other people have got the wrong dope, you’ve got to have the wrong dope or be an off ox. IAN Perfect product of a standardized nation! EDDY [_Pointing with his stick._] What’s this standardized snake? IAN That’s my diagram correcting the sun. EDDY