Act 2 (End) Flashcards
(43 cards)
(When Ella lets Jane inside)
I just ran across to the store. I haven’t been five minutes. Here!
Jane: “Here!”
Ella: “What’s that?”
Two hundred dollars. You can try that dressmaking business if you want to, Ella.
Ella: “Two hundred dollars!”
You needn’t thank me.
Ella: “That ain’t it. I was just wondering what’s come over you all of a sudden?”
It’s my birthday, that’s all. Did you know it was my birthday, Ben?
Jane: “Did you know it was my birthday, Ben?”
Ben: “Is it? I shoveled them damned paths!”
Ella’s going into the dressmaking business, Ben.
Jane: “Ella’s going into the dressmaking business, Ben.”
Ben: “What of it?”
Ella: “That’s what I say. It ain’t much of a business.”
Are you tired?
Jane: “Are you tired?”
Ben: “Maybe.”
You’ve done a lot of work today.
Jane: “You’ve done a lot of work today.”
Ben: “And every day.”
I don’t suppose you know how much good it’s done you, how well you look!
Ben: “Beauty’s only skin deep.”
Folks change, even in a few weeks, outside and in. Hard work don’t hurt anybody.
Ben: “I got blisters on my feet. The damned shoes are stiffer than they ever was.”
Icebound, you said. Maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Sometimes, just lately, it’s seemed to me that if folks would try, things needn’t be so bad. All of em try, I mean, for themselves, and for everybody else.
Jane: “All of em try, I mean, for themselves, and for everybody else.”
Ben: “If I was you, I’d not hold out long.”
If you put some pork fat on those shoes tonight, your feet wouldn’t hurt so bad.
Jane: “…your feet wouldn’t hurt so bad.”
Ben: “Maybe.”
(Pause)
I’m lonesome tonight. We always made a lot of birthdays when I was a girl.
Jane: “We always made a lot of birthdays when I was a girl.”
Ben: “Some do.”
Your mother didn’t. She found me once trying, the day I was fifteen. I remember how she laughed at me.
Ben: “All the Jordans have got a sense of humor.”
She wasn’t a Jordan, not until she married your father.
Ben: “When a woman marries into a family, she mostly just shuts her eyes and jumps in.”
Your mother was the best of the whole lot of you. Anyway, I think so.
Ben: “I know it. I always thought a lot of her, in spite of our issues.”
She loved you, Ben.
Ben: “She left me without a dollar, knowing I was going to State’s Prison, and what I’d be by the time I get out.”
Maybe someday you’ll understand why she did it.
Ben: “Because she thought you’d take better care of the money than any of the rest of us,”
And you hate me because of that, the way all the rest of the Jordans do?
Jane: “And you hate me because of that, the way all the rest of the Jordans do?”
Ben: “Sometimes.”
I suppose it’s natural.
Ben: “But I ain’t such a fool as Henry, and the women folks. They think you took advantage and fooled her into what she did. I thought so at first, now I don’t.”
What do you think now, Ben?
Ben: “She watched you; she knew you were worth more than all of us in a lump. I know it, too, but some way it riles me worse than if you wasn’t.”
That’s silly!
Ben: “…I get all held up inside; I never was so damned uncomfortable in all my life.”
And I was never so happy.
Ben: “I suppose God knew what he was about when he made women.”
Of course he did.
Ben: “Anyhow, he gave em the best of it, all right.”
You don’t mean that! You can’t!
