o the
floor, where she lets it lie, and sits staring before her._

ELIZA:
So that's the last.

EZRA:
The last? The last of what?

ELIZA:
The last of your sons to leave you. Jim's gone now.

EZRA:
Gone where, the tyke? After his wife, I'll warrant.
'Twill take him all his time to catch her up:
She's three months' start of him. The gonneril,
To be forsaken on his wedding-day:
And the ninneyhammer let her go--he let her!
Do you reckon I'd let a woman I'd fetched home
Go gallivanting off at her own sweet will?
No wench I'd ringed, and had a mind to hold,
Should quit the steading till she was carried, feet-first
And shoulder-high, packed snug in a varnished box.
The noodle couldn't stand up to a woman's tongue:
And so, lightheels picked up her skirts, and flitted,
Before he'd even bedded her--skelped off
Like a ewe turned lowpy-dyke; and left the nowt,
The laughing-stock of the countryside. He should
Have used his fist to teach her manners. She seemed
To have the fondy flummoxed, till his wits
Were fozy as a frosted swede. Do you reckon
I'd let a lass ...

ELIZA:
And yet, six lads have left you,
Without a by-your-leave.

EZRA:
Six lads?

ELIZA:
Your sons.

EZRA:
Ay ... but they'd not the spunk to scoot till I
Was blind and crippled. The scurvy rats skidaddled
As the old barn-roof fell in. While I'd my sight,
They'd scarce the nerve to look me in the eye,
The blinking, slinking squealers!

ELIZA:
Ay, we're old.
The heat this morning seems to suffocate me,
My head's a skep of buzzing bees; and I pant
Like an old ewe under a dyke, when the sun gives scarce
An inch of shade. You harp on sight: but eyes
Aren't everything: my sight's a girl's: and yet
I'm old and broken: you've broken me, among you.
I'd count the pens of a hanging hawk: yet my eyes
Have saved me little: they've never seen to the bottom
Of the blackness of men's hearts. The very sons
Of my body, I reckoned to ken through and through,
As every mother thinks she knows her sons,
Have been pitch night to me. We never learn.
I thought I'd got by heart each turn and twist
Of all Jim's stupid cunning: but even he's
Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left;
All gone in bitterness--firstborn to reckling:
Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve:
And now Jim ends ...

EZRA:
You mean J