Harry.  Look you here, old Missis, ’tis a stomach full of naught as I carries.  If so be as you has a crust to spare —

Vashti. [Pointing to a door.] There be a plate of meat inside of that cupboard.  You take and fill your belly with it.

Harry.  Thank you kindly, Missis, but I counts I han’t the time for heavy feeding this morning.

Vashti.  ‘Twould serve she right, th’ old sinner, for the place to be licked up clean, against the time when her was come’d back, so ’twould.

Harry.  Well, Missis, you can tell May ’tis a brave New Year as I do wish she.

Vashti. [Listening to bells which are heard suddenly ringing.] There, there they be!  Harken to them!  ’Tis with bells as they be coming out.  Bells what’s ringing.  I count ’tis fine as May do look now in her marriage gown.  Harken, ’tis the bells a-shaking of the window pane.  I be an old woman, but the hearing of me bain’t spoiled.

Harry.  I warrant it bain’t, Missis.  Why, they’re ringing wonderful smart.  ’Tis enough, upon my word, for to fetch down every stone of the old place.

Vashti.  Get you out upon the garden path and tell I if you sees them a-coming.

Harry.  That’s it, old Missis, and so I will.

[He goes outside the house.

Vashti. [Sitting upright and looking with fixed vacancy before her.] And when they was all laid low and the heads of them bowed.  “You would, would you,” I says, for they was lifting the ends of their ugly mouths at I. And I passed among they and them did quail and crouch, being with fear.  And me and mine did reach the place what was on the top.  “See now yourselves,” I says, “if so be that you do not go in blindness and in dark.”  ’Twas May what stood there aside of I. And “Look you,” I says, “over the bended necks of you my child shall pass.  For you be done to death by the lies which growed within you and waxed till the bodies of you was fed with them and the poison did gush out from your lips.”  But my little child stood in the light, and the hands of her was about the stars.

Harry. [Coming in.] Look, they be all a-coming over the meadow, old
Missis.  But May han’t comed with they—­May han’t come too.

[The wedding party enters the room as the curtain falls.]

Footnotes: 

{1} “As I walked Out.”  From Folk Songs from Essex collected by R. Vaughan Williams.  The whole, or two verses can be sung.

{2} “The Seeds of Love,” “Folk Songs from Somerset,” edited by Cecil J. Sharp and Charles L. Marsden.

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK, six plays ***

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