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, old clocker.

ELIZA:
True enough,
Marriage means little more than a new gown
To some: but Phoebe's not a fancicle tauntril,
With fingers itching to hansel new-fangled flerds.
Why she'd wed ...

EZRA:
Tuts! Girls take their chance. And you'd
Conceit enough of Jim, at one time--proud
As a pipit that's hatched a cuckoo: and if the gowk
Were half as handsome as I--you ken, yourself,
You needed no coaxing: I wasted little breath
Whistling to heel: you came at the first "Isca!"

ELIZA:
Who kens what a lass runs away from, crazed to quit
Home, at all hazards, little realizing
It's life, itself, she's trying to escape;
And plodging deeper.

EZRA:
Trust a wench for kenning.
I've to meet the wife who'd be a maid again:
Once in the fire, no wife, though she may crackle
On the live coals, leaps back to the frying-pan.
It's against nature.

ELIZA:
Maybe: and yet, somehow,
Phoebe seemed different.

EZRA:
I've found little difference
Betwixt one gimmer and another gimmer,
When the ram's among them. But, where does she hail from?

ELIZA:
Allendale way. Jim met her at Martinmas fair.

EZRA:
We met ...

ELIZA:
Ay, fairs have much to answer for.

EZRA:
I thought 'twas Judith Ellershaw.

ELIZA:
God forbid
'Twas Judith I'd to share with: though Jim fancied
The lass, at one time. He's had many fancies:
Light come, light go, it's always been with Jim.