Why, you're to do for me
What I can't do myself. — And yet it's hard
To make out where Shale hurt you. What's the sum
Of all he did to you? Got you quit of marriage
Without the upset of a funeral.
Huff:
Why need you blurt your rambling mind at me?
Let me bide quiet in my thought awhile,
And it's a little while we have for thought.
Merrick:
I know your thought. Paddling round and around,
Like a squirrel working in a spinning cage
With his neck stretcht to have his chin poke up,
And silly feet busy and always going;
Paddling round the story of your good life,
Your small good life, and how the decent men
Have jeered at your wry antic.
Huff:
My good life!
And what good has my goodness been to me?
You show me that! Somebody show me that!
A caterpillar munching a cabbage-heart,
Always drudging further and further from
The sounds and lights of the world, never abroad
Nor flying free in warmth and air sweet-smelling:
A crawling caterpillar, eating his life
In a deaf dark — that's my gain of goodness!
And it's too late to hatch out now! —
I can but fancy what I might have been;
I scarce know how to sin! — But I believe
A long while back I did come near to it.
Merrick:
Well done! — O but I should have guesst all this!
Huff: