Mrs.Bernick: Do you think we had better draw the curtains?

Rorlund: Yes, that was exactly what I meant.

(The ladies resume their places at the work-table; RORLUND shuts
the verandah door, and draws the curtains over it and over the
windows, so that the room becomes half dark.)

Olaf (peeping out through the curtains): Mother, the manager's
wife is standing by the fountain now, washing her face.

Mrs.Bernick: What? In the middle of the marketplace?

Mrs.Rummel: And in broad daylight, too!

Hilmar: Well, I must say if I were travelling across a desert
waste and found myself beside a well, I am sure I should not stop
to think whether--. Ugh, that frightful clarinet!

Rorlund: It is really high time the police interfered.

Bernick: Oh no; we must not be too hard on foreigners. Of course
these folk have none of the deep-seated instincts of decency
which restrain us within proper bounds. Suppose they do behave
outrageously, what does it concern us? Fortunately this spirit of
disorder, that flies in the face of all that is customary and
right, is absolutely a stranger to our community, if I may say
so--. What is this! (LONA HESSEL walks briskly in from the door
on the right.)