CHRISTY. Yes.

MRS. DUDGEON. What does she want troubling me at this hour,
before I'm properly dressed to receive people?

CHRISTY. You'd better ask her.

MRS. DUDGEON (threateningly). You'd better keep a civil tongue in
your head. (He goes sulkily towards the door. She comes after
him, plying him with instructions.) Tell that girl to come to me
as soon as she's had her breakfast. And tell her to make herself
fit to be seen before the people. (Christy goes out and slams the
door in her face.) Nice manners, that! (Someone knocks at the
house door: she turns and cries inhospitably.) Come in. (Judith
Anderson, the minister's wife, comes in. Judith is more than
twenty years younger than her husband, though she will never be
as young as he in vitality. She is pretty and proper and
ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an opinion of
herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which
serves her instead of strength. She has a pretty taste in dress,
and in her face the pretty lines of a sentimental character
formed by dreams. Even her little self-complacency is pretty,
like a child's vanity. Rather a pathetic creature to any
sympathetic observer who knows how rough a place the world is.
One feels, on the whole, that Anderson might have chosen worse,
and that she, needing protection, could not have chosen better.)
Oh, it's you, is it, Mrs. Anderson?

JUDITH (very politely--almost patronizingly). Yes. Can I do
anything for you, Mrs. Dudgeon? Can I help to get the place ready