“Saw drip would build thy head and fill thy crannies,” Patience went on, “yet ye feel smug in wisdom.”
And again: “I card and weave, and ye look a painful lot should I pass ye a bobbin to wind.”
A request to repeat a doubtful line drew forth this exclamation: “Bother! I fain would sew thy seam, not do thy patching.”
At another time she protested against a discussion that interrupted the delivery of a poem: “Who then doth hold the distaff from whence the thread doth wind? Thou art shuttling ’twixt the woof and warp but to mar the weaving.”
And once she exclaimed, “I sneeze on rust o’ wits!”
But it must not be understood that Patience is bad-tempered. These outbreaks are quoted to show one side of her personality, and they usually indicate impatience rather than anger: for, a moment after such caustic exclamations, she is likely to be talking quite genially or dictating the tenderest of poetry. She quite often, too, expresses affection for the family with which she has associated herself. At one time she said to Mrs. Curran, who had expressed impatience at some cryptic utterance of the board:
“Ah, weary, weary me, from trudging and tracking o’er the long road to thy heart! Wilt thou, then, not let me rest awhile therein?”
And again: “Should thee let thy fire to ember I fain would cast fresh faggots.”
And at another time she said of Mrs. Curran: “She doth boil and seethe, and brew and taste, but I have a loving for the wench.”