Krindlesyke | Page 4

a fine fantigue,

When she found I'd mizzled. Yet, if she'd turned up
In time, poor
mealy-face, for all your roses,
You'd never have clapped eyes on
Krindlesyke:
This countryside and you would still be strangers.
ELIZA:
In time!
EZRA:
A narrow squeak.
ELIZA:
If she'd turned up,
The red-haired girl had lived at Krindlesyke,

Instead of me, this forty-year: and I--
I might ... But we must dree our
weird. And yet,
To think what my life might have been, if only--

The difference!
EZRA:
Ay, and hers, "if ifs and ans!"
But I'm none certain she'd have seen it,
either.
I could have had her without wedding her,
And no mistake,
the nickering, red-haired baggage.
Though she was merry, she'd big
rabbit-teeth,
Might prove gey ill to live with; ay, and a swarm
Of
little sandy moppies like their doe,
Buck-teeth and freckled noses and
saucer-eyes,
Gaping and squealing round the table at dinner,
And
calling me their dad, as likely as not:
Though little her mug would
matter, now I'm blind;
And by this there'll scarce be a stump in her
yellow gums,
And not a red hair to her nodding poll--
That shock of
flame a shrivelled, grizzled wisp
Like bracken after a heathfire; that
creamy skin,
Like a plucked hen's. But she'd a merry eye,
The
giglet; and that coppertop of hers
Was good to think on of a nippy
morning:
While you--but you were young then ...
ELIZA:

Young and daft.
EZRA:
Nay, not so gite; for I was handsome then.
ELIZA:
Ay, the braw birkie of that gairishon
Of menseless
slubberdegullions: and I trusted
My eyes, and other people's tongues,
in those days:
And you'd a tongue to glaver a guff of a girl,
The
devil's own; and whatever's gone from you,
You've still a tongue,
though with a difference:
Now it's all edge.
EZRA:
The knife that spreads the butter
Will slice the loaf. But it's sharper
than my teeth.
ELIZA:
Ay, tongues cut deeper than any fang can bite,

Sore-rankling wounds.
EZRA:
You talk of tongues! I'm deaf:
But, for my sins, I cannot be deaf to
yours,
Nattering me into my grave; and, likely, your words
Will
flaffer about my lugs like channering peesweeps,
When I lie cold.
ELIZA:
Yes, I was young, and agape
For your wheedling flum, till it fleeched
my self from me.
There's something in a young girl seems to work

Against her better sense, and gives her up,
Almost in spite of her.
EZRA:
It's nature.
ELIZA:
Then
Nature has more than enough to answer for.
Young, ay! And

you, as gallant as the stallion,
With ribboned tail and mane, that
pranced to the crack
Of my father's whip, when first I saw you gaping,

Kenspeckle in that clamjamfrey of copers.
EZRA:
Love at first sight!
ELIZA:
And I was just as foolish
As you were braw.
EZRA:
Well, we'd our time of it,
Fools, or no fools. And you could laugh in
those days,
And didn't snigger like the ginger fizgig.
Your voice
was a bird's: but you laugh little now;
And--well, maybe, your voice
is still a bird's.
There's birds and birds. Then, 'twas a cushy-doo's

That's brooding on her nest, while the red giglet's
Was a gowk's at the
end of June. Do you call to mind
We sat the livelong day in a golden
carriage,
Squandering a fortune, forby the tanner I dropt?
They
wouldn't stop to let me pick it up;
And when we alighted from the
roundabout,
Some skunk had pouched it: may he pocket it
Red-hot
in hell through all eternity!
If I'd that fortune now safe in my kist!

But I was a scatterpenny: and you were bonnie--
Pink as a dog-rose
were your plump cheeks then:
Your hair'd the gloss and colour of
clean straw:
And when, at darkening, the naphtha flares were kindled,

And all the red and blue and gold aglitter--
Drums banging,
trumpets braying, rattles craking;
And we were rushing round and
round, the music--
The music and the dazzle ...
ELIZA:
Ay: that was it--
The rushing and the music and the dazzle.
Happen
'twas on a roundabout that Jim
Won Phoebe Martin.
EZRA:

And when you were dizzy,
And all a hazegaze with the hubblyshew;

You cuddled up against me, snug and warm:
And round and round
we went--the music braying
And beating in my blood: the gold
aglitter ...
ELIZA:
And there's been little dazzle since, or music.
EZRA:
But I was merry, till I fetched you home,
To swarm the
house with whinging wammerels.
ELIZA:
You fetched me from my home. If I'd but known
Before I
crossed the threshold. I took my arles,
And had to do my darg. And
another bride
Comes now. They'll soon be here: the train was due

At half-past one: they'd walk it in two hours,
Though bride and
groom.
EZRA:
I wish he'd married Judith.
Cow-eyed, you called the wench; but
cows have horns,
And, whiles, they use them when you least expect.

'Twould be no flighty heifer you'd to face,
If she turned mankeen.
But, I liked the runt.
Jim might do worse.
ELIZA:
You liked ... But come, I'll set
Your chair outside, where you can feel
the sun;
And hearken to the curlew; and be the first
To welcome
Jim and Phoebe as man and wife.
Come!
EZRA:
Are the curlew calling?
ELIZA: