"Ha?—oh, your talk, Master Reuben. But only look at Ben boy there a-blushing! Bound to happen—I knowed it, I knowed it, I know all the signs of what makes the world go 'round, and who should know 'em better? O Ben, oh dearie me, soon you'll be a-moping about with a long face, there'll be a wringin' of hands, you'll go sighing with the springtime in your loins and no living with you at all. Ben dear! Tell Kate. Is she fair, Ben? Is she kind?"
"Now, Kate, truly!"
He will go where I cannot go. Three years past he told me something of his dreams, but I dream never that way, never.
"Why, Ben, not a word! Mumchance. But I know, for a'n't I alway said it was love 't makes the world go 'round? Oh dearie me, they do grow to be men before there's time a spider should build her web over the cradle where they was rocked."
"Can't help it, Kate, the way you stuff Reuben and me with sausage and kindness, we're bound to get big and bad and greasy."
Where he goeth I cannot go, and he will be much loved, as he ought to be, but I ... I think that I....
"Phoo, didn't I marry for love me own self, the more fool me for not listening to wiser heads, however and moreover I don't regret it nor won't to my dying day, though it was a whoreson hard thing to learn the cull was na' but a file, dearie."
"A file, Kate?"
He said: A man of learning must often hide ... even more from the almost-wise. He said: You and I ought to be friends.