And you would leave your mother, lying dead,
With none but strangers’ hands to lay her out—
No soul of her kin to tend her at the last?
(She goes to the dresser and looks in the drawers, taking out an apron and tying it round her waist.)
Ezra:
I never guessed she’d go, and leave me alone.
How did she think I could get along without her?
She kenned I could do nothing for myself:
And yet she’s left me alone, to starve to death—
Just sit in my chair, and starve. It wasn’t like her.
And the breath’s scarce out of her body, before the place
Is overrun with a plague of thieving rats.
They’ll eat me out of house and home: my God,
I’ve come to this—an old blind crippled dobby,
Forsaken of wife and bairns; and left to die—
To be nibbled to death by rats: de’il scart the vermin!
Bell:
Time’s drawn your teeth, but hasn’t dulled your tongue’s edge.
Peter:
Come, woman: what the devil are you up to?
What’s this new game?
Bell:
Peter, I’m biding here.