Mrs Huff:
Maybe 'twill do if you but laugh at them.
Warp:
I'll try for that; but they are not good jokes;
Though there's a kind of monkey-look about them.
Mrs Huff:
They thinking I'ld be near one or the other
After this night! Will I be made no more
Than clay that children puddle to their minds,
Moulding it what they fancy?--Shale was brave:
He made a bogy and defied it, till
He frightened of his work and ran away.
But Huff!--Huff was for modelling wickedly.
Huff:
Who told you that?
Mrs Huff:
I need no one's telling.
I was your wife once. Don't I know your goodness?
A stupid heart gone sour with jealousy,
To feel its blood too dull and thick for sinning.--
Yes, Huff would figure a wicked thought, but had
No notion how, and flung the clay aside.--
O they were gaudy colours both! But now
Fear has bleacht their swagger and left them blank,
Fear of a loon that cried, End of the World!
Huff:
Shale, do you know what we're to do?
Shale:
I'ld like
To have the handling of that dowser-man.
Huff:
Just that, my lad, just that!
Warp:
And your fired rick.
Huff:
Let it be blazes! Quick, Shale, after him!
I'll tramp the night out, but I'll take the rogue.
Shale (to the others):
You wait, and see us haul him by the ears,
And swim the blatherer in Huff's farm-yard pond.
[As HUFF and SHALE go out, they see the comet before them.]
Huff:
The devil's own star is that!
Shale:
And floats as calm
As a pike basking.
Huff:
There shouldn't be such stars!
Shale:
Neither such dowsers, and we'll learn him that.
[They go off together.]
Sollers:
Why, the star's dwindling now, surely!
Merrick:
O, small
And dull now to the glowing size it was.
Vine:
But is it certain there'll be nothing smasht?
Not even a house knockt roaring down in crumbles?
--And I did think, I'ld open my wife's mouth
With envy of the dreadful things I'd seen!