Laura. ’Tisn’t much use as you’ll be on the farm.
Julia. I wish I’d never come nigh to it. I was happier far before.
Laura. ’Tis a grand life. You’ll see it as I do one of these days.
Julia. No, that I shall not. Every day that I wake and hear the cattle lowing beneath my window I turn over on my pillow, and ’tis a heart of lead that turns with me. The smell of the wild flowers in the fields calls me, but ’tis to the dairy I must go, to work. And at noonday, when the shade of the woodland makes me thirsty for its coolness, ’tis the kitchen I must be in—or picking green stuff for the market. And so on till night, when the limbs of me can do no more and the spirit in me is like a bird with the wing of it broken.
Laura. You’ll harden to it all by winter time right enough.
Julia. O I’ll never harden to it. ’Tis not that way I am made. Some girls can set themselves down with four walls round them, and do their task nor ask for anything beyond, but ’tis not so with me.
Laura. How is it then with you?
Julia. [Pointing.] There—see that blue thing yonder flying from one blossom to another. That’s how ’tis with me. Shut me up close in one place, I perish. Let me go free, and I can fly and live.
Laura. You do talk a powerful lot of foolishness that no one could understand.
Julia. O, do not let us talk at all. Let us bide still, and get ourselves refreshed by the sweetness and the wildness of the forest.