Reading Segment #9It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs. Hale. Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that choked the life out of him. MRS. HALE His neck. Choked the life out of him. [Her hand goes out and rests
on the bird-cage.]
MRS. PETERS [With rising voice.] We don't know who killed him. We don't know. MRS. HALE [Her own feeling not interrupted.]
MRS. PETERS [Something within her speaking.]
MRS. HALE [Moving.] How soon do you suppose they'll be through, looking for the evidence? MRS. PETERS I know what stillness is. [Pulling herself back.]
MRS. HALE [Not as if answering that.] I wish you'd seen Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons and stood up there in the choir and sang. [A look around the room.] Oh, I wish I'd come over here once in a while! That was a crime! Th at was a crime! Who's going to punish that? MRS. PETERS [Looking upstairs.] We mustn't -- take on. MRS. HALE I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be -- for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things -- it's all just a different kind of the same thing. [Brushe s her eyes, noticing the bottle of fruit, reaches out for it.] If I was you I wouldn't tell her her fruit was gone. Tell her it ain't. Tell her it's all right. Take this in to prove it to her. She -- she may never know whether it was broke or not. MRS. PETERS [Takes the bottle, looks about for something to wrap it in; takes
petticoat from the clothes brought from the other room, very nervously
begins winding this around the bottle. In a false voice.] My, it's
a good thing the men couldn't hear us. Woul dn't they just laugh! Getting
all stirred up over a little thing like a -- dead canary. As if that could
have anything to do with -- with -- wouldn't they laugh!
MRS. HALE [Under her breath.] Maybe they would -- maybe they wouldn't. |