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!
CURTAIN.