Home Fires

[Jenny has been showing Pat how to use the switchboard in the telephone exchange]

Jenny Marshall:
[patronisingly] Well, despite your age, you seem like a quick enough learner. Job's yours if you want it.

Pat Simms:
Thank you so much. You're an excellent teacher... of the elderly.

[Joyce confronts Frances, brandishing a letter that she has received]

Joyce Cameron:
What is the meaning of this?

Frances Barden:
It's pretty straightforward, Mrs Cameron. All available non-essential land is to be utilised forthwith for food production.

Joyce Cameron:
I understand what it means.

Frances Barden:
Be that the vicarage rose-beds, the cricket pitch or your tennis courts. Of course it's not legally binding. I merely assumed you'd be happy to opt in, like everyone else.

Joyce Cameron:
I do not... opt in.

Frances Barden:
The problem with not opting *in* is that it rather looks like you're opting *out*. I wonder how well that would go down, when everyone else is pulling together so brilliantly.

[Frances, Claire and Cookie are waiting to meet the new evacuee who is about to get off the bus]

Claire Hillman:
I hope she's nice.

Frances Barden:
[flippantly] No reason why she should be. The unpleasant have as much right to be evacuated as the pleasant.

Frances Barden:
[to Sarah] Being a vicar doesn't make you right about everything. It just makes others *assume* you are.