“I be a wag atruth, and lo, my posey-wreath be stripped!”
She seldom favors the men in this way. She has referred to herself several times as a spinster, and this may account for a certain reluctance to saying complimentary things of the other sex. “A prosy spinster may but plash in love’s pool,” she remarked once, and at another time she said: “A wife shall brush her goodman’s blacks and polish o’ his buckles, but a maid may not dare e’en to blow the trifling dust from his knickerbockers.” With a few notable exceptions, her attitude toward men has been expressed in sarcasm, none the less cutting to those for whom she has an affection manifested in other ways. To one such she said:
“Thee’lt peg thy shoes, lad, to best their wearing, and eat too freely of the fowl. Thy belly needeth pegging sore, I wot.”
“Patience doesn’t mean that for me,” he protested.
“Nay,” she said, “the jackass ne’er can know his reflection in the pool. He deemeth the thrush hath stolen of his song. Buy thee a pushcart. ’Twill speak for thee.”
And of this same rotund friend she remarked, when he laughed at something she had said:
“He shaketh like a pot o’ goose jell!”
“I back up, Patience,” he cried.
“And thee’lt find the cart,” she said.