id="pgepubid00012"/> I spared her all I could. Ay, that was it:
She couldn’t abide to watch me trying to spare her,
Another woman doing her work, finoodling
At jobs she’d do so smartly, tidying her hearth,
Using her oven, washing her cups and saucers,
Scouring her tables, redding up her rooms,
Handling her treasures, and wearing out her gear.
And now, another, wringing out my dishclout,
And going about my jobs in her own fashion;
Turning my household, likely, howthery-towthery,
While I sit mum. But it takes forty years’
Steady east wind to teach some folk; and then
They’re overdried to profit by their learning.
And so, without a complaint, and keeping her secrets,
Your mother died with patient, quizzical eyes,
Half-pitying, fixed on mine; and dying, left
Krindlesyke and its gear to its new mistress.

Ezra:

A woman, she was. You’ve never had her hand
At farls and bannocks; and her singing-hinnies
Fair melted in the mouth—not sad and soggy
As yours are like to be. She’d no habnab
And hitty-missy ways; and she’d turn to,
At shearing-time, and clip with any man.
She never spared herself.

Eliza:

And died at forty,
As white and worn as an old table-cloth,
Darned, washed, and ironed to a shred of cobweb,
Past mending; while your father was sixty-nine
Before he could finish himself, soak as he might.

Ezra:

Don’t you abuse my father. A man, he was—
No fonder of his glass than a man should be.
Few like him now: I’ve not his guts, and Jim’s
Just a lamb’s head, gets half-cocked on a thimble,
And mortal, swilling an eggcupful; a gill
Would send him randy, reeling to the gallows.
Dad was the boy! Got through three bottles a day,
And never turned a hair, when his own master,
Before we’d to quit Rawridge, because the dandy
Had put himself outside of all his money—
Teeming it down his throat in liquid gold,
Swallowing stock and plenishing, gear and graith.
A bull-trout’s gape and a salamander thrapple—
A man, and no mistake!

Eliza:

A man; and so,
She died; and since your mother was carried out,
Hardly a woman’s crossed the threshold, and none
Has slept the night at Krindlesyke. Forty-year,
With none but men! They’ve kept me at it; and now
Jim’s bride’s to take the work from my hands, and do
Things over that I’ve done over for forty-year,
Since I took them from your mother—things some woman’s
Been doing at Krindlesyke since the first bride
Came home.

Ezra:

Three hundred years since the first herd
Cut peats for that hearth’s kindling. Set alow,
Once and for all, it’s seen a wheen lives burn
Black-out: and when we, too, lie in the house
That never knew housewarming, ’twill be glowing.
Ay! and some woman’s tongue’s been going it,
Like a wag-at-the-wa’, in this steading, three hundred years,
Tick-tocking the same things over.

Eliza:

Dare say, we’ll manage:
A decent lass—though something in her eye,
I couldn’t quite make out. Hardly Jim’s sort ...
But, who can ever tell why women marry?
And Jim ...

Ezra:

Takes after me: and wenches buzz
Round a handsome lad, as wasps about a bunghole.

Eliza:

Though now they only see skin-deep, those eyes
Will search the marrow. Jim will have his hands full,
Unless she’s used to menfolk and their ways,
And past the minding. She’d the quietness
That’s a kind of pride, and yet, not haughty—held
Her head like a young blood-mare, that’s mettlesome
Without a touch of vice. She’ll gan her gait
Through this world, and the next. The bit in her teeth,
There’ll be no holding her, though Jim may tug
The snaffle, till he’s tewed. I’ve kenned that look
In women’s eyes, and mares’, though, with a difference.
And Jim—yet she seemed fond enough of Jim:
His daffing’s likely fresh to her, though his jokes
Are last week’s butter. Last week’s! For forty-year
I’ve tholed them, all twice-borrowed, from dad and granddad,
And rank, when I came to Krindlesyke, to find
Life, the same jobs and same jests over and over.

Ezra:

A notion, that, to hatch, full-fledged and crowing!
You must have brooded, old clocker.

Eliza:

True enough,
Marriage means little more than a new gown
To some: but Phœbe’s not a fancicle tauntril,
With fingers itching to hansel new-fangled flerds.
Why she’d wed ...

Ezra:

Tuts! Girls take their chance. And you’d
Conceit enough of Jim, at one time—proud
As a pipit that’s hatched a cuckoo: and if the gowk
Were half as handsome as I—you ken, yourself,
You needed no coaxing: I wasted little breath
Whistling to heel: you came at the first “Isca!”

Eliza:

Who kens what a lass runs away from, crazed to quit
Home, at all hazards, little realizing
It’s life, itself, she’s trying to escape;
And plodging deeper.

Ezra:

Trust a wench for kenning.
I’ve to meet the wife who’d be a maid again:
Once in the fire, no wife, though she may crackle
On the live coals, leaps back to the frying-pan.
It’s against nature.

Eliza:

Maybe: and yet, somehow,
Phœbe seemed different.

Ezra:

I’ve found little difference
Betwixt one gimmer and another gimmer,
When the ram’s among them. But, where does she hail from?

Eliza:

Allendale way. Jim met her at Martinmas fair.

Ezra:

We met ...

Eliza:

Ay, fairs have much to answer for.

Ezra:

I thought ’twas Judith Ellershaw.

Eliza:

God forbid
’Twas Judith I’d to share with: though Jim fancied
The lass, at one time. He’s had many fancies:
Light come, light go, it’s always been with Jim.

Ezra:

And I was gay when I was young—as brisk
As a yearling tup with the ewes, till I’d the pains,
Like red-hot iron, clamping back and thighs.
My heart’s a younker’s still; but even love
Gives in, at last, to rheumatics and lumbago.
Now, I’m no better than an old bell-wether,
A broken-winded, hirpling tattyjack
That can do nothing but baa and baa and baa.
I’d just to whistle for a wench at Jim’s age:
And Jim’s ...

Eliza:

His father’s son.

Ezra:

He’s never had
My spirit. No woman’s ever bested me.
For all his bluster, he’s a gaumless nowt,
With neither guts nor gall. He just butts blindly—
A woolly-witted ram, bashing his horns,
And