DEACON BRODIE, Mr. E. J. HENLEY. WALTER LESLIE, Mr. GRAHAM STEWART. WILLIAM LAWSON, Mr. EDMUND LYONS. ANDREW AINSLIE, Mr. FRED DESMOND. HUMPHREY MOORE, Mr. EDMUND GRACE. GEORGE SMITH, Mr. HORATIO SAKER. HUNT, Mr. HENRY VERNON. CAPTAIN RIVERS, Mr. BRUCE PHILIPS. MARY BRODIE, Miss ANNIE ROBE. JEAN WATT, Miss CARRIE COOTE. ACT I. TABLEAU I. THE DOUBLE LIFE. _The Stage represents a room in the Deacon’s house_, _furnished partly as a sitting-_, _partly as a bed-room_, _in the style of an easy burgess of about_ 1780. _C._, _a door_; _L. C._, _a second and smaller door_; _R. C._, _practicable window_; _L._, _alcove_, _supposed to contain bed_; _at the back_, _a clothes-press and a corner cupboard containing bottles_, _etc._ MARY BRODIE _at needlework_; OLD BRODIE, _a paralytic_, _in wheeled chair_, _at the fireside_, _L._ SCENE I _To these_ LESLIE, _C._ LESLIE. May I come in, Mary? MARY. Why not? LESLIE. I scarce knew where to find you. MARY. The dad and I must have a corner, must we not? So when my brother’s friends are in the parlour he allows us to sit in his room. ’Tis a great favour, I can tell you; the place is sacred. LESLIE. Are you sure that ‘sacred’ is strong enough? MARY. You are satirical! LESLIE. I? And with regard to the Deacon? Believe me, I am not so ill-advised. You have trained me well, and I feel by him as solemnly as a true-born Brodie. MARY. And now you are impertinent! Do you mean to go any further? We are a fighting race, we Brodies. Oh, you may laugh, sir! But ’tis no child’s play to jest us on our Deacon, or, for that matter, on our Deacon’s chamber either. It was his father’s before him: he works in it by day and sleeps in it by night; and scarce anything it contains but is the labour of his hands. Do you see this table, Walter? He made it while he was yet a ’prentice. I remember how I used to sit and watch him at his work. It would be grand, I thought, to be able to do as he did, and handle edge-tools without cutting my fingers, and getting my ears pulled for a meddlesome minx! He used to give me his mallet to keep and his nails to hold; and didn’t I fly when he called for them! and wasn’t I proud to be ordered about with them! And then, you know, there is the tall cabinet yonder; that it was that proved him the first of Edinburgh joiners, and worthy to be their Deacon and their head. And the father’s chair, and the sister’s workbox, and the dear dead mother’s footstool—what are they all but proofs of the Deacon’s skill, and tokens of the Deacon’s care for those about him? LESLIE. I am all penitence. Forgive me this last time, and I promise you I never will again. MARY. Candidly, now, do you think you deserve forgiveness? LESLIE. Candidly, I do not. MARY. Then I suppose you must have it. What have you done with Willie and my uncle?