"An' how's Coden Rachel?"
"She's charmin', thankee."
"Comely weather, comely weather; the gulls be comin' back down the coombe, I see."
"I be jealous about its lastin'; for 'tis over-rathe for the time o' year. Terrible topsy-turvy the seasons begin to run, in my old age. Here's May in Janewarry; an' 'gainst May, comes th' east wind breakin' the ships o' Tarshish."
"Now, what an instructive chap you be to convarse with, I do declare! Darned if I didn' stand here two minnits, gazin' up at the seat o' your small-clothes, tryin' to think 'pon what I wanted to say; for I'd a notion that I wanted to speak, cruel bad, but cudn' lay hand on't. So at last I takes heart an' says 'Mornin', I says, beginnin' i' that very common way an' hopin' 'twould come. An' round you whips wi' 'ships o' Tarshish' pon your tongue; an' henceforth 'tis all Q's an' A's, like a cattykism."
"Well, now you say so, I did notice, when I turned round, that you was lookin' no better than a fool, so to speak. But what's the notion?"
"'Tis a question I've a-been daggin' to ax'ee ever since it woke me up in the night to spekilate thereon. For I felt it very curious there shud he three Zebedee Minardses i' this parish a-drawin' separate breath at the same time."
"Iss, 'tis an out-o'-the-way fact."
"A stirrin' age, when such things befall! If you'd a-told me, a week agone, that I should live to see the like, I'd ha' called 'ee a liar; an' yet here I be a-talkin' away, an' there you be a-listening an' here be the old world a-spinnin' us round as in bygone times—"
"Iss, iss—but what's the question?"