Stephen Elwin purchases a painting of a king who bathes in the certainty of his authority, but nonetheless appears ‘human and tragic.’ Conversing with an eager young lieutenant, Stephen ponders whether age has lent him that same knowledge and authority, remembering in a flash the quote from Hazlitt, ‘No young man believes he shall ever die.’ The weight of this sentence explodes in Stephen from time to time. Riding the bus home, Stephen watches as the conductor refuses the appeals of two young boys asking the price of a ride. Was the man unjust in his jest, Stephen wonders, or is that small triumph all he can win at his weary age? Stephen customarily checks his anger at those without the privileges he has received. At home, Stephen takes pleasure in watching his daughter pore over the painting and give her unfavorable opinion honestly. His wife Lucy arrives and begins complaining about the maid, who is named Margaret, like his daughter, and is known as "the other Margaret." Stephen has been disturbed by the uptick in his wife’s complaints about working-class people, like the maid, but her list of legitimate grievances against Margaret the maid is formidable. Lucy launches into a story of a bus conductor who satirically imitated a Jewish accent in front of her, and Stephen offers the tentative defense that bus workers are underpaid as the beginning of an explanation for their ignorance. Upstairs, Stephen marvels at the fullness and gaiety of childhood on display in Margaret’s room, but suddenly Margaret bursts in, in tears over her mother’s treatment of the maid. Her mother follows and asserts she isn’t bullying the maid but just being honest, and Margaret counters that Margaret the maid is not responsible and couldn’t help her behavior. As the Hazlitt quote breaks over Stephen again, he comes to the dark realization that all people are equal in their knowledge of death, and thus equal in responsibility. In claiming society is responsible, his daughter was in fact fearing her own impending responsibility. He reminds his daughter that their previous Black maid was quite kind, and balks when Margaret asserts that Millie had a ‘slave mentality.’ Abruptly, Margaret the maid announces she is quitting. Back in the kitchen Margaret Elwin’s ceramic lamb crashes to the ground and shatters, and having seen the maid holding it, Margaret despairs in the crashing of her own arguments around her feet.