Krindlesyke | Page 2

the midden,
And no braw cockerel's

hustled him from it yet,
For all their crowing. The blind old bird's still
game.
They've never had his spirit, the young cheepers,
Not one;
and Jim's the lave of the clutch; and he
Will never lord it at
Krindlesyke till I'm straked.
But this what's-her-name the gaby's
bringing ...
ELIZA:
Phoebe.
EZRA:
A posical name; I never heard the like.
She'll be a flighty
faggit, mark my words.
ELIZA:
She's only been here once before; and now
She'll be here
all the time. I'll find it strange
With another woman in the house.
Needs must
Get used to it. Your mother found it strange,
Likely ...
It's my turn now, and long in coming.
Perhaps, that makes it harder.
I've got set
Like a vane, when the wind's blown east so long, it's
clogged With dust, and cannot whisk with the chopping breeze.
'Twill
need a wrench to shift my bent; for change
Comes sore and difficult
at my time of life.
EZRA:
Ay, you may find your nose put out of joint,
If she's a
spirited wench.
ELIZA:
Due east it's blown
Since your mother died. She barely outlived my
coming;
And never saw a grandchild. I wonder ... Yet,
I spared her
all I could. Ay, that was it:
She couldn't abide to watch me trying to
spare her,
Another woman doing her work, finoodling
At jobs she'd
do so smartly, tidying her hearth,
Using her oven, washing her cups
and saucers,
Scouring her tables, redding up her rooms,
Handling
her treasures, and wearing out her gear.
And now, another, wringing
out my dishclout,
And going about my jobs in her own fashion;


Turning my household, likely, howthery-towthery,
While I sit mum.
But it takes forty years'
Steady east wind to teach some folk; and then

They're overdried to profit by their learning.
And so, without a
complaint, and keeping her secrets,
Your mother died with patient,
quizzical eyes,
Half-pitying, fixed on mine; and dying, left

Krindlesyke and its gear to its new mistress.
EZRA:
A woman, she was. You've never had her hand
At farls and
bannocks; and her singing-hinnies
Fair melted in the mouth--not sad
and soggy
As yours are like to be. She'd no habnab
And hitty-missy
ways; and she'd turn to,
At shearing-time, and clip with any man.

She never spared herself.
ELIZA:
And died at forty,
As white and worn as an old table-cloth,
Darned,
washed, and ironed to a shred of cobweb,
Past mending; while your
father was sixty-nine
Before he could finish himself, soak as he
might.
EZRA:
Don't you abuse my father. A man, he was--
No fonder of
his glass than a man should be.
Few like him now: I've not his guts,
and Jim's
Just a lamb's head, gets half-cocked on a thimble,
And
mortal, swilling an eggcupful; a gill
Would send him randy, reeling to
the gallows.
Dad was the boy! Got through three bottles a day,
And
never turned a hair, when his own master,
Before we'd to quit
Rawridge, because the dandy
Had put himself outside of all his
money--
Teeming it down his throat in liquid gold,
Swallowing
stock and plenishing, gear and graith.
A bull-trout's gape and a
salamander thrapple--
A man, and no mistake!
ELIZA:
A man; and so,
She died; and since your mother was carried out,

Hardly a woman's crossed the threshold, and none
Has slept the night

at Krindlesyke. Forty-year,
With none but men! They've kept me at it;
and now
Jim's bride's to take the work from my hands, and do

Things over that I've done over for forty-year,
Since I took them from
your mother--things some woman's
Been doing at Krindlesyke since
the first bride
Came home.
EZRA:
Three hundred years since the first herd
Cut peats for that hearth's
kindling. Set alow,
Once and for all, it's seen a wheen lives burn

Black-out: and when we, too, lie in the house
That never knew
housewarming, 'twill be glowing.
Ay! and some woman's tongue's
been going it,
Like a wag-at-the-wa', in this steading, three hundred
years, Tick-tocking the same things over.
ELIZA:
Dare say, we'll manage:
A decent lass--though something in her eye,

I couldn't quite make out. Hardly Jim's sort ...
But, who can ever
tell why women marry?
And Jim ...
EZRA:
Takes after me: and wenches buzz
Round a handsome lad, as wasps
about a bunghole.
ELIZA:
Though now they only see skin-deep, those eyes
Will
search the marrow. Jim will have his hands full,
Unless she's used to
menfolk and their ways,
And past the minding. She'd the quietness

That's a kind of pride, and yet, not haughty--held
Her head like a
young blood-mare, that's mettlesome
Without a touch of vice. She'll
gan her gait
Through this world, and the next. The bit in her teeth,

There'll be no holding her, though Jim may tug
The snaffle, till he's
tewed. I've kenned that look
In women's eyes, and mares', though,
with a difference.
And Jim--yet she seemed fond enough of Jim:


His daffing's likely fresh to her, though his jokes
Are last week's
butter. Last week's! For forty-year
I've tholed them, all
twice-borrowed, from dad and granddad, And rank, when I came to
Krindlesyke, to find
Life, the same jobs and same jests over and over.
EZRA:
A notion, that, to hatch, full-fledged and crowing!
You
must have brooded,