Transcribed from “The Sleeping Car and Other Farces” 1911 Houghton Mifflin Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE REGISTER. Farce. I. SCENE: In an upper chamber of a boarding-house in Melanchthon Place, Boston, a mature, plain young lady, with every appearance of establishing herself in the room for the first time, moves about, bestowing little touches of decoration here and there, and talking with another young lady, whose voice comes through the open doorway of an inner room. * * * * * _Miss Ethel Reed_, from within: “What in the world are you doing, Nettie?” _Miss Henrietta Spaulding_: “Oh, sticking up a household god or two. What are you doing?” _Miss Reed_: “Despairing.” _Miss Spaulding_: “Still?” _Miss Reed_, tragically: “Still! How soon did you expect me to stop? I am here on the sofa, where I flung myself two hours ago, and I don’t think I shall ever get up. There is no reason _why_ I ever should.” _Miss Spaulding_, suggestively: “Dinner.” _Miss Reed_: “Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken heart!” _Miss Spaulding_: “I don’t believe your heart is broken.” _Miss Reed_: “But I tell you it is! I ought to know when my own heart is broken, I should hope. What makes you think it isn’t?” _Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, it’s happened so often!” _Miss Reed_: “But this is a real case. You ought to feel my forehead. It’s as hot!” _Miss Spaulding_: “You ought to get up and help me put this room to rights, and then you would feel better.” _Miss Reed_: “No; I should feel worse. The idea of household gods makes me sick. Sylvan deities are what I want; the great god Pan among the cat-tails and arrow-heads in the ‘ma’sh’ at Ponkwasset; the dryads of the birch woods—there are no oaks; the nymphs that haunt the heights and hollows of the dear old mountain; the”— _Miss Spaulding_: “Wha-a-at? I can’t hear a word you say.” _Miss Reed_: “That’s because you keep fussing about so. Why don’t you be quiet, if you want to hear?” She lifts her voice to its highest pitch, with a pause for distinctness between the words: “I’m heart-broken for—Ponkwasset. The dryads—of the—birch woods. The nymphs—and the great—god—Pan—in the reeds—by the river. And all—that—sort of—thing!” _Miss Spaulding_: “You know very well you’re not.” _Miss Reed_: “I’m not? What’s the reason I’m not? Then, what am I heart-broken for?” _Miss Spaulding_: “You’re not heart-broken at all. You know very well that he’ll call before we’ve been here twenty-four hours.” _Miss Reed_: “Who?” _Miss Spaulding_: “The great god Pan.” _Miss Reed_: “Oh, how cruel you are, to mock me so! Come in here, and sympathize a little! Do, Nettie.” _Miss Spaulding_: “No; you come out here and utilize a little. I’m acting for your best good, as they say at Ponkwasset.” _Miss Reed_: “When they want to be disagreeable!” _Miss Spaulding_: “If this room isn’t in order by the time he calls, you’ll be everlastingly disgraced.”