This reflects the unanimous decision in Cantwell v. Connecticut, which was decided seven years prior to this case and likely set a precedent. The Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the Equal Protections Clause, prohibits discrimination by local, state, and federal governments (solified by the Cantwell decision) on the basis of religion. With transportation being a public service and religious schools being private institutions, it can be expected that transportation to a private school would be less profit-oriented just as transportation to a public school would be.

This passage again relies on the idea of things being “too soon”, but this time it is while May is asking what things she can do to help her mother. It would make sense for her mother’s response to be “Yes, but it is too late” rather than “too soon”, as it seems that May might not have spent enough time helping her mother until around the time she passed away. If May is dead, maybe this is her reason for not moving on to the afterlife. The fact that it is “too soon” also reflects the fact that neither character knows their age or how much time has passed. The concept of time is very ambiguous in this play, adding to the eeriness and the lack of answers to this unknown incident and who is truly alive.

The timing of when the ghost of May’s mother appears also falls under the cluster of time. May says that she appeared again not long after she died, and that she now appears at night, especially during Vespers, which is an evening prayer. In the realm of things being “too soon” and “too late”, this could relate to the fact that May used to pray with her mother when her mother was sick. May’s mother might be returning during this time because the prayers she spoke when she was sick were too late to help her ascend to the afterlife. Maybe she only turned to prayer after she fell ill instead of relying on it her entire life, and now she appears to May during Vespers as if to somehow repent for that fact.

Falling under the cluster of time is this short passage about May’s and her mother’s ages, as the ages represent how little time has passed since the referenced incident. The fact that neither character knows their own age is an impactful feature of this part of the scene, and it brings into question who is truly “there” in this play. This passage also follows the pattern of things being “too soon” or “too late”, with May’s mother stating that she had her too late in life. It seems therefore that things in this play are never on time, which further implies the fact that May is dead. Beckett seems to be alluding to the fact that it is too soon for May to move onto the afterlife, possibly because of the trauma she holds from whatever incident happened to her.