Victoria, Victoria! D'ye hear? Come in, will you?
I'm amazed at you, Victoria; I really am. How can you be gallivanting about in the street with your grandfather lying dead and cold upstairs, I don't know.
Be off now and change your dress before Your Aunt Elizabeth and your Uncle Ben come. It would never do for them to find you in colors.
What are they coming for? They haven't been here for ages.
They're coming to talk over poor grandpa's affairs. Your father sent them a telegram as soon as we found he was dead.
MRS SLATER Closes the window and and puts the blind straight, and then returns to her work at the table .
Good gracious, that's never them.
VICTORIA, a precocious girl of ten, dressed in colors, enters.
No, thank goodness! It's your father
A noise is heard.
Not come yet, eh?
You can see they haven't, can't you?
Now, Victoria, be off upstairs and that quick. Put your white frock on with a black sash.
MRS SLATER hurries to the door and opens it.
HENRY SLATER, a stooping heavy man, with a drooping moustache, enters. He is wearing a black tail coat, grey trousers, a black tie, and a bowler hat.