Judith:
Home? You’ve come home, Jim?
Jim:
Nay, I’m my own fetch!
God’s truth! there’s little else but skin and bone
Beneath these tatters: just a two-legged boggart,
With naught but wind to fill my waim—small wonder
You’re maiselt, to see a scarecrow stottering in—
For plover’s eggs and heather-broth don’t sleek
A wrinkled hide or swell a scrankit belly.
But still, what should there be to flabbergast you
About a man’s returning to his home?
Naught wrong in coming home, I hope? By gox,
A poor lad can’t come home, but he’s cross-questioned,
And stared at like ... Why do you stare like that?
It’s I should be agape, to find you here:
But no, I’m not surprised: you can’t surprise me:
I’m a travelled man: I’ve seen the world; and so,
Don’t look for gratitude. My eyes were opened,
Once and for all, by Phœbe and you, that day—
Nigh twenty-year since: and they’ve not been shut ...
By gum, that’s so! it seems like twenty-year
Since I’d a wink of sleep ... And, anyway,
I’ve heard the story, all the goings-on;
And a pretty tale it is: for I’d a drink,
A sappy-crack with that old windywallops,
Sep Shanks, in a bar at Bellingham: and he let out
How you’d crawled back to Krindlesyke with your daughter—
Our daughter, I should say: and she, no less,
Married to Peter’s son: though how the deuce
You picked him up, is more that I can fashion.
Sep had already had his fill of cheerers,
Before I met him; and that last rum-hot
Was just the drop too much: and he got fuddled.
Ay, Sep was mortal-clay, the addled egg:
And I couldn’t make head or tail of his hiccuping,
Though he tried to make himself plain: he did his best,
Did Sep: I’ll say that for him—tried so hard
To make himself plain, he got us both chucked out:
And I left him in the gutter, trying still.
Judith:
You’ve come from Bellingham hiring?
Jim:
I couldn’t stand
The dindum: felt fair-clumpered in that cluther—
Such a hubblyshew of gowks and flirtigigs,
Craking and cackling like a gabble of geese:
And folk kept looking: I might have been a bizen,
The way they gaped: so I thought I’d just win home
For a little peace and quiet. Where’s my daughter,
And this young cuckoo, calls himself my nephew,
And has made himself free and easy of my nest?
Ay, but you’ve fettled things nicely, the lot of you,
While I tramped the hungry roads. He’s pinched my job:
But I bear no grudge: it’s not a job I’m after,
Since I’ve a married daughter I can live with.
I’ve seen the world, a sight too much: and I mean
To settle down, and end my days in peace
In my old home.
Judith:
Your home? But you can’t stay here.