Steve. [Who has lit a pipe and is smoking.] Why, George, be you out of sorts this morning? You don’t look up to much, and that’s the truth.
George. [Stopping before Steve.] Hark you, Steve. ’Tis on my mind to ask summat of you. Did you have much speech with the poor thing what you took in from the snow last night?
Steve. No, George, and that I didn’t. Her was mostly in a kind of drunken sleep all the time, and naught to be got out from she. Mother, her tried. But ’twas like trying to get water from the pump yonder, when ’tis froze.
George. Your mother’s a poor one at melting ice, Steve, and ’tis what we all knows.
Steve. Ah, ’twasn’t much as we could do for the likes of she—what was a regular roadster. Bad herbs, all of them. And if it hadn’t been so as ’twas my wedding eve, this one shouldn’t have set foot inside of the house. But ’tis a season when a man’s took a bit soft and foolish, like, the night afore his marriage. Bain’t that so, George?
George. And when was it, Steve, as she went off from here?
Steve. That I couldn’t rightly say, George, but I counts ’twas just upon daybreak. And ’twas Dorry what seed her off the place and gived her a piece of bread to take along of her.
George. And do you think as she got talking a lot to Dorry, Steve?
Steve. I’m blest if I do know, George. I never gived another thought to she. What’s up?
George. They was getting the body of her from out of Simon’s Pool as I did come by. That’s all.