would be more answerable to you being
dry.

_Damer:_ What way could I bear the expense of a fire on the hearth
and it to leave smouldering and to break out into a blaze? A month's
cutting maybe to go to ashes within three minutes, and into wisps of
smoke. And the price of turf in this year gone wild out of measure,
and it packed so roguish you could read the printed speeches on the
paper through the sods you do be buying in the creel.

_Staffy:_ I was saying myself not to meddle with it. It is hurry
is a worse friend than delay.

_Damer:_ Where did you get those spuds are roasting there upon
the hearth?

_Ralph:_ Herself that brought them out from the sieve, thinking to
make ready your meal.

_Damer:_ My seed potatoes! Samples I got from the guardians and
asked in the shops and in stores till I'd gather enough to set a few
ridges in the gardens would serve me through the length of the year!

_Delia:_ Let you be satisfied so with your mouldy bit of loaf.
_(Breaks a bit from it and hands it to him.)_

_Damer:_ Do not be breaking it so wasteful! The mice to have news
there was as much as that of crumbs in the house, they would be
running the same as chickens around the floor!

_Ralph:_ Thinking to be comfortable to you she was, the way you
would make us welcome from this out.

_Damer:_ Which of ye is after meddling with my clock?

_Delia:_ It was a full hour before its time.

_Darner:_ It to be beyond its time, wouldn't that save fire and
candles sending me to my bed early in the night? Leave down those
boots! _(Takes them from Staffy.)_ Is it that you are wearing out
the uppers with scraping at them and scratching! Is it to rob me ye
are come into this place?

_Delia:_ I tell you we only came in getting word that you were
done and dying.

_Damer:_ Ha! Is it to think I was dying ye did? Well, I am not. I
am not so easy quenched. Strength and courage I have, to keep a fast
grip of what I own.

_Delia:_ Let you not be talking that way! We are no grabbers and
no thieves!

_Damer:_ I have it in my mind that ye are. Very ravenous to run
through my money ye are.

_Delia:_ The world knows I am not ravenous! I never gave my heart
to silver or to gold but only to the thing it would bring in. But to
hold from me the thing my heart is craving after, you might as well
blacken the hearth.

_Damer:_ Striving to scare me out of my courage and my wits, the
way I'll give in to go making my will.

_Ralph:_ She