The Skin of Our Teeth Read Free Page A

right, flies up into the air and disappears.
    â€”and my advice to you is not to inquire into why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate,—that’s my philosophy.
    Don’t forget that a few years ago we came through the depression by the skin of our teeth! One more tight squeeze like that and where will we be?
    This is a cue line. SABINA looks angrily at the kitchen door and repeats:
    . . . we came through the depression by the skin of our teeth; one more tight squeeze like that and where will we be?
    Flustered, she looks through the opening in the right wall; then goes to the window and reopens the Act.
    Oh, oh, oh! Six o’clock and the master not home yet. Pray God nothing has happened to him crossing the Hudson. Here it is the middle of August and the coldest day of the year. It’s simply freezing; the dogs are sticking. One more tight squeeze like that and where will we be?
    VOICE:
    Off stage.
    Make up something! Invent something!
    SABINA:
    Well . . . uh . . . this certainly is a fine American home . . . and—uh . . . everybody’s very happy . . . and—uh . . .
    Suddenly flings pretense to the winds and coming down stage says with indignation:
    I can’t invent any words for this play, and I’m glad I can’t. I hate this play and every word in it.
    As for me, I don’t understand a single word of it, anyway,—all about the troubles the human race has gone through, there’s a subject for you.
    Besides, the author hasn’t made up his silly mind as to whether we’re all living back in caves or in New Jersey today, and that’s the way it is all the way through.
    Oh—why can’t we have plays like we used to have— Peg o’ My Heart, and Smilin’ Thru, and The Bat —good entertainment with a message you can take home with you?
    I took this hateful job because I had to. For two years I’ve sat up in my room living on a sandwich and a cup of tea a day, waiting for better times in the theatre. And look at me now: I—I who’ve played Rain and The Barretts of Wimpole Street and First Lady —God in Heaven!
    The STAGE MANAGER puts his head out from the hole in the scenery.
    MR. FITZPATRICK:
    Miss Somerset!! Miss Somerset!
    SABINA:
    Oh! Anyway!—nothing matters! It’ll all be the same in a hundred years.
    Loudly.
    We came through the depression by the skin of our teeth,—that’s true!—one more tight squeeze like that and where will we be?
    Enter MRS. ANTROBUS , a mother.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Sabina, you’ve let the fire go out.
    SABINA:
    In a lather.
    One-thing-and-another; don’t-know-whether-my-wits-are-upside-or-down; might-as-well-be-dead-as-alive-in-a-house-all-sixes-and-sevens. . . .
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    You’ve let the fire go out. Here it is the coldest day of the year right in the middle of August, and you’ve let the fire go out.
    SABINA:
    Mrs. Antrobus, I’d like to give my two weeks’ notice, Mrs. Antrobus. A girl like I can get a situation in a home where they’re rich enough to have a fire in every room, Mrs. Antrobus, and a girl don’t have to carry the responsibility of the whole house on her two shoulders. And a home without children, Mrs. Antrobus, because children are a thing only a parent can stand, and a truer word was never said; and a home, Mrs. Antrobus, where the master of the house don’t pinch decent, self-respecting girls when he meets them in a dark corridor. I mention no names and make no charges. So you have my notice, Mrs. Antrobus. I hope that’s perfectly clear.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    You’ve let the fire go out!—Have you milked the mammoth?
    SABINA:
    I don’t understand a word of this play.—Yes, I’ve milked the mammoth.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Until Mr. Antrobus comes home we have no food and we have no fire. You’d better go over to the neighbors and borrow some fire.
    SABINA:
    Mrs. Antrobus! I