ALLEN. What, wi’ them little hands. They don’t look big enough to do anything but be kissed.
DEB. (Looking up and smiling.) They can do something else, can’t they?
ALLEN. Ah! They be like the parson’s, not as soft as they looks. (Puts down butter on the table—pause—during which Deborah proceeds with her cooking, and Allen stands watching her.) What a jolly little farmer’s wife thee’d make.
DEB. Yes; I only want the jolly little farmer.
ALLEN. Ah, thee won’t find many of that sort about. Farming don’t pay enough for a man to get jolly on, now-a-days.
DEB. Oh, we have enough to eat and drink, and a little to spend on foolishness. You want so much.
ALLEN. (Goes l.) Not more than what a many has. Not more than a little bit of what this young Hanning-ford is coming back to—enough to let a man see what the world’s like a bit, instead of being cooped oop all one’s life, like an old cow, in one corner of it.
DEB. But you can’t live all over it, and one corner must be much as good as another.
ALLEN. (Crosses r.) Ah, thee don’t understand it, lass. Thee women folk can stand day arter day the same, but we lads are restless wi’ it. We feel as there’s summat big and stirring going on somewhere, and we long to be among it—to be in the great world. It seems to call to me—(puts foot on settle L.)—to come to it, sometimes. I hear it of a night when I’m watching the sheep on the hill fields. Maybe it’s only the sea breaking on the rocks down by Glenthorn—or the wind among the old oaks, but it sounds like a distant far-off voice—(gets l. of table R. with back to Deborah)—calling to me, and it rings and echoes in my ears, till I feel at times that I must start up then and there and follow it. (Deborah r. of table r. Allen l. of table r.)
DEB. (Very gravely, laying her hand on his arm.) Allen, lad, don’t you remember reading one evening to us of the sirens, who in the old days used to haunt the sea caves, and sing so sweetly that the sailors who once paused to listen, were lured on and on till they were wrecked among the cruel rocks? May not the voices that you hear be like the singing of those sirens?