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comfortable to sit in. What’s this here??
    [
He has seized her wrist on which hangs a bracelet of many little gold charms. She sinks somewhat uneasily in beside him
.]
    BABY DOLL : It’s a, it’s a. . . charm bracelet.
    [
He begins to finger the many little gold charms attached
.]
    BABY DOLL : My daddy gave it to me. Them there’s the ten commandments.
    SILVA : And these?
    BABY DOLL : My birthdays. It’s stretchable. One for each birthday.
    SILVA : How many charming birthdays have you had?
    BABY DOLL : As many as I got charms hanging on that bracelet.
    SILVA : Mind if I count ’em?
    [
They are close
.]
    . . .fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and. . .
    BABY DOLL : That’s all. I’ll be twenty tomorrow. Tomorrow is Election Day and Election Day is my birthday. I was born on the day that Frank Delano Roosevelt was elected for his first term.
    SILVA : A great day for the country for both reasons.
    BABY DOLL : He was a man to respect.
    SILVA : And you’re a lady to respect, Mrs. Meighan.
    BABY DOLL [
sadly and rather touchingly
]: Me? Oh, no—I never got past the fourth grade.
    SILVA : Why’d you quit?
    BABY DOLL : I had a great deal of trouble with long division. . . .
    SILVA : Yeah?
    BABY DOLL : The teacher would tell me to go to the blackboard and work out a problem in long division and I would go to the blackboard and lean my head against it and cry and cry and—cry. . . .
    Whew! I think the porch would be cooler. Mr. Vacarro, I can’t get over your legs.
    SILVA : You want to move my legs.
    BABY DOLL : Yes, otherwise, I can’t get out of the car. . . .
    SILVA : Okay.
    [
He raises his legs so she can get out. Which she does, and continues
. . .]
    BABY DOLL : YES, I would cry and cry. . . . Well. . . soon after that I left school. A girl without education is—without education. . . .
    Whew. . . . Feel kind of dizzy. Hope I’m not gettin’ a
sun
stroke. —I better sit in the shade. . . .
    [
Vacarro follows her casually into the shade of the pecan tree where there’s a decrepit old swing. Suddenly
,
he leaps into the branches and then down with a pecan. He cracks it in his mouth and hands her the kernels
. . . .]
    BABY DOLL : Mr. Vacarro! I wouldn’t dream! —excuse me, but I just wouldn’t dream! of eating a nut that a man had cracked in his mouth. . . .
    SILVA : You’ve got many refinements. I don’t think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with. . . .
    BABY DOLL : Well, I—ought to go in, but I get depressed when I pass through those empty rooms. . . .
    SILVA : All the rooms empty?
    BABY DOLL : All but the nursery. And the kitchen. The stuff in those rooms was paid for. . . .
    SILVA : You have a child in the nursery?
    BABY DOLL : Me? No. I sleep in the nursery myself. Let down the slats on the crib. . . .
    SILVA : Why do you sleep in the nursery?
    BABY DOLL : Mr. Vacarro, that’s a
personal
question.
    [
There is a pause
.]
    BABY DOLL : I ought to go in. . . but. . . you know there are places in that house which I never been in. I mean the attic for instance. Most of the time I’m afraid to go into that house by myself. Last night when the fire broke out I sat here on this swing for hours and hours till Archie Lee got home, because I was scared to enter this old place by myself.
    [
Vacarro has caught this discrepancy too
.]
    SILVA : It musta been scary here without your husband to look after you.
    BABY DOLL : I’m tellin’ you! The fire lit up the whole countryside and it made big crazy shadows and we didn’t have a coke in the house and the heat and the mosquitoes and—I was mad at Archie Lee.
    SILVA : Mad at Mr. Meighan? What about?
    BABY DOLL : Oh, he went off and left me settin’ here without a coke in the place.
    SILVA : Went off and left you, did he??!!
    BABY DOLL : Well, he