What’s worth the kenning’s seldom learned by speiring.
Judith:
Though, knowing myself, I dreaded what might chance,
What might already ...
Bell:
You’d no cause to worrit
Michael’s not that sort: he’s respectable—
Too staid and sober for his tinker-mother:
He’ll waste no matches, lighting wayside fires.
Judith:
Like me, Ruth’s easy kindled; hard to quench—
A flying spark, and the heather’s afire in a gale;
And the fell’s burned to the rock—naught but black ash,
When the downpour comes, too late.
Bell:
Ay—but the flare,
And crackle, and tossing flames, and golden smoke;
And the sting of the reek in the nostrils!
Judith: