_The Scene is the Exterior of a Cottage in West Issacshire on a desperately Arcadian afternoon in August._ MR. ICKY, _quaintly dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan peasant, is pottering and doddering among the pots and dods. He is an old man, well past the prime of life, no longer young. From the fact that there is a burr in his speech and that he has absent-mindedly put on his coat wrongside out, we surmise that he is either above or below the ordinary superficialities of life._ _Near him on the grass lies_ PETER, _a little boy._ PETER, _of course, has his chin on his palm like the pictures of the young Sir Walter Raleigh. He has a complete set of features, including serious, sombre, even funereal, gray eyes--and radiates that alluring air of never having eaten food. This air can best be radiated during the afterglow of a beef dinner. He is looking at_ MR. ICKY, _fascinated._ _Silence. . . . The song of birds._ PETER: Often at night I sit at my window and regard the stars. Sometimes I think they’re my stars.... (_Gravely_) I think I shall be a star some day.... MR. ICKY: (_Whimsically_) Yes, yes ... yes.... PETER: I know them all: Venus, Mars, Neptune, Gloria Swanson. MR. ICKY: I don’t take no stock in astronomy.... I’ve been thinking o’ Lunnon, laddie. And calling to mind my daughter, who has gone for to be a typewriter.... (_He sighs._) PETER: I liked Ulsa, Mr. Icky; she was so plump, so round, so buxom. MR. ICKY: Not worth the paper she was padded with, laddie. (_He stumbles over a pile of pots and dods._) PETER: How is your asthma, Mr. Icky? MR. ICKY: Worse, thank God!...(_Gloomily.)_ I’m a hundred years old... I’m getting brittle. PETER: I suppose life has been pretty tame since you gave up petty arson. MR. ICKY: Yes... yes.... You see, Peter, laddie, when I was fifty I reformed once--in prison. PETER: You went wrong again? MR. ICKY: Worse than that. The week before my term expired they insisted on transferring to me the glands of a healthy young prisoner they were executing. PETER: And it renovated you? MR. ICKY: Renovated me! It put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson in comparison! PETER: (_Awed_) How ghastly! Science is the bunk. MR. ICKY: (_Sighing_) I got him pretty well subdued now. ’Tisn’t every one who has to tire out two sets o’ glands in his lifetime. I wouldn’t take another set for all the animal spirits in an orphan asylum. PETER: (_Considering_) I shouldn’t think you’d object to a nice quiet old clergyman’s set. MR. ICKY: Clergymen haven’t got glands--they have souls.