Ezra:
Ay ... but they’d not the spunk to scoot till I
Was blind and crippled. The scurvy rats skidaddled
As the old barn-roof fell in. While I’d my sight,
They’d scarce the nerve to look me in the eye,
The blinking, slinking squealers!
Eliza:
Ay, we’re old.
The heat this morning seems to suffocate me,
My head’s a skep of buzzing bees; and I pant
Like an old ewe under a dyke, when the sun gives scarce
An inch of shade. You harp on sight: but eyes
Aren’t everything: my sight’s a girl’s: and yet
I’m old and broken: you’ve broken me, among you.
I’d count the pens of a hanging hawk: yet my eyes
Have saved me little: they’ve never seen to the bottom
Of the blackness of men’s hearts. The very sons
Of my body, I reckoned to ken through and through,
As every mother thinks she knows her sons,
Have been pitch night to me. We never learn.
I thought I’d got by heart each turn and twist
Of all Jim’s stupid cunning: but even he’s
Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left;
All gone in bitterness—firstborn to reckling:
Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve:
And now Jim ends ...
Ezra:
You mean Jim’s gone for good?
Eliza:
For good and all: he’s taken Peter’s road.
Ezra:
And who’s to tend the ewes? He couldn’t go—
No herd could leave his sheep to an old wife’s care:
For this old carcase, once counted the best herd’s
In the countryside, is a useless bag of bones now.
Jim couldn’t leave ...