Mrs. Dudgeon monologue (Act 1) — The Devil's Disciple

(_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?