- [last lines]
- Mrs. St. Maugham: [on the verge of tears] Is it a crime to want to be remembered?
- Miss Madrigal: No. The Pharaohs built the pyramids for that reason.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: What do women do in my case?
- Miss Madrigal: It wouldn't hurt to go on gardening.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Have I've a muddle of my garden... and my heart? Will Olivia forgive me?
- Miss Madrigal: In time, perhaps.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Would you stay with me? Would you?
- Miss Madrigal: I'll stay... as long as I'm wanted. You know, we could make this place so full of life - a good life - and people would come from everywhere to see us. What do you think?
- Mrs. St. Maugham: I must know one thing.
- Miss Madrigal: What's that?
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Did you do it?
- Miss Madrigal: What many learned men at the top of their profession couldn't find out after a long, long trial. Why should you know.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Forty years ago, I should have said the same thing, but I warn you, before I die, I'll find out.
- [the two walk off together]
- Laurel: Oh, if I could only be somewhere other than where I am, someone other than who I am!
- Miss Madrigal: There now, where and what do you want to be?
- Laurel: Dead... and in Hell!
- Judge McWhirrey: Alcohol in the middle of the day is exciting when one is thirty, but disastrous when one is seventy.
- Maitland: You're not the usual thing in governesses, are you?
- Miss Madrigal: Are you the usual thing in servants?
- Laurel: [reading] "It was a lovely summer's morning. The cathedral bells tolled harmoniously over the great and fruitful valley. Ding dong, *ding dong*"...
- Judge McWhirrey: How is your mother?
- Laurel: Hush. We don't speak of her here.
- Judge McWhirrey: My dear girl, she's still living?
- Laurel: In sin, Judge. In sin.
- Anna: They say five have left already.
- Miss Madrigal: Really?
- Anna: There must be something terribly frightening in this house!
- Laurel: That sounds like a perfect description of me!
- [first lines]
- Anna: Excuse me. Would Mrs. St. Maugham live here?
- Maitland: She would.
- Anna: [pointing to the newspaper in her hand] I'm sorry, I came in answer to the advertisement.
- Maitland: There's no need to be sorry... at least not yet. Come in please.
- Anna: [entering the house] Ooh, goodness me, it's very grand, isn't it.
- Maitland: Built like a fort. It has to be.
- Anna: [grabbing Maitland's arm] Pardon me, but are there many others?
- Maitland: You're number six.
- Anna: [shocked] So many?
- Maitland: Numbers one to five have already left... or rather fled.
- Anna: [nervously] Ooh dear, but Mistress must be very hard to please.
- Maitland: True. But in fairness, the other ladies didn't really want the job.
- Anna: Why not?
- Maitland: Because, uh, let us say that this is a nervous age.
- Anna: [worriedly] Oh.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Hurry, Maitland, is the curse of civilization.
- Maitland: The fact that I hurry, Madam, gives certain people the leisure to make such observations.
- Miss Madrigal: Laurel has good instincts. I think in time they will serve her well.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Miss Madrigal. I did not engage you as a fortune-teller.
- Laurel: She'll come. Grandmother will come. She's in the garden. She's a great gardener, but nothing grows for her.
- Miss Madrigal: The child's outlandish.
- Maitland: This is an outlandish household. You may just find it to your liking.
- Miss Madrigal: Because I'm outlandish?
- Maitland: Unusual. Emphasize it. Mrs. St. Maugham cherishes the unusual.
- Miss Madrigal: I should think, as one grows older, death would seem more natural.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Natural? The closer one gets, the more unnatural it seems.
- Miss Madrigal: In that case, a garden should be a good lesson.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Why?
- Miss Madrigal: So much dies in it, and so often, yet it goes on.
- Laurel: I'm not to be trusted. I steal things. I cheat at cards. I make up dreadful lies about people, and then I blackmail them.
- Miss Madrigal: Is that all? That's not much.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: You study her as if you're seeing something I don't.
- Miss Madrigal: I am. I see myself at that age, as if I were looking at an old photograph.
- Laurel: Well, I give you fair warning, Miss Madrigal. Exposing you will be the most fun of all. You're wonderfully odd.
- Laurel: [alone, to a doll] Laurel? Laurel darling. Did you think Mother had forgotten you? You know better than that, don't you? It's just that Mother's been so busy - trying to keep the house pretty and happy for you. You know how Mother loves you. Of course you do. She loves you more than any little girl in the whole wide world, more than any other person alive. If anything ever goes wrong, or if you just feel like crying for no reason at all, you know I'll always be here - to put my arms around you, hold you, protect you. You know all that without being told. So now Mother's going to read you to sleep - with a beautiful, beautiful story. It's all about a good little girl who thought nobody loved her. Can you imagine anything so silly? Now, "Once upon a time..."
- Miss Madrigal: Love is the most important word in any language. From love comes happiness.
- Laurel: You talk easily about love and happiness, but you never smile.
- Miss Madrigal: [thinks, smiles] You're right. You're absolutely right.
- Laurel: You're beautiful when you smile. You should smile more often.
- Laurel: My mother's a Jezebel. She's so overloaded with *sex* that it sparkles. She's golden and striped, like something in the jungle.
- Miss Madrigal: You sound proud of her.
- Miss Madrigal: Good morning, Laurel.
- Laurel: I told you I could tell whether a morning was good or not for myself!
- Miss Madrigal: I wanted you to know how *I* felt about the morning.
- Miss Madrigal: Laurel, people who live on fantasy usually do so because they're afraid no one cares for them.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: The garden - it's shriveling up before my very eyes!
- Miss Madrigal: This is a chalk garden, Mrs. St. Maugham. You are trying to grow flowers in chalk.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: It's not the soil. Its the wind from the sea, the salt.
- Miss Madrigal: They have been in pure lime. Not so much as a little leaf mold. They could have compost or peat moss or soil food, but nothing in the world has been done for them. Have you time, Mrs. St. Maugham, before death to throw away season after season?
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Of course, of course. I know time is important, but...
- Miss Madrigal: Your flowers need nourishment, something to grow on. Your soil can't give them what it doesn't have.
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Then you give them what they need. You're in charge of my garden.
- Miss Madrigal: Am I? I wasn't sure. I'll do my best, Mrs. St. Maugham, to help you with your garden. And the child. Their problems are similar.
- Laurel: Miss Madrigal, you are a 12-pound-a-week governess, which means you are a failure in life. So please don't try to run mine.
- Laurel: And what else is on the menu this morning, boss? Mathematics? Personality development? *Sex* education?
- Mrs. St. Maugham: Laurel!
- Laurel: Well, I've got to learn sometime or I'll never get the hang of it.
- Laurel: She did have time. But not for me or my father, but for somebody she stood with in the shadows of the doorway downstairs, somebody she stood there kissing and hugging and making love to.
- Laurel: [sarcastically] Now, Miss Madrigal, you clever, ingenious, experienced woman, tell me how to love everybody in the world. Quote me a proverb, a motto. Give me a piece of sugar that will make life taste like one big lollipop. Try!
- Maitland: Before you go, let me give you a book. Any book. For Laurel's benefit... If she's still about. Now, what do you fancy? Arnold Bennett, Conan Doyle, Hemingway, uh, H.G. Wells?
- Maitland: When a man kills, it's the one act he does totally alone. The world isn't with him. Therefore, his convictions must be tremendous. I admire people with convictions.
- Miss Madrigal: People don't kill reasonably. They kill unreasonably, passionately. Thank you for the wine.