Yes, as you're so clever, You can talk down maybe yon brandishing star! Warp: O, 'tis the star has flickt your brains? Indeed, The tail swings long enough to-night for that. Well, look your best at it; 'tis off again To go its rounds, they tell me, from now on; And the next time it swaggers in our sky, The moles a long while will have tired themselves Of having their easy joke with me. [A pause.] Merrick: You mean The flight of the star is from us? Sollers: But the world, The whole world reckons on it battering us! Warp: Who told you that? Sollers: A dowser. Merrick: Where's he gone? Warp: A dowser! say a tramping conjurer. You'll believe aught, if you believe a dowser. Sollers: I had it in me to be doubting him. Merrick: The noise you made was like that! But I knew You'ld laugh at me, so sure you were the world Would shiver like a bursting grindlestone: Else I'ld have said out loud, 'twas a fool's whimsy. Vine: Where are you now? What am I now to think? Your minds run round in puzzles, like chased hares. I cannot sight them. Merrick: Think of going to bed. Sollers: And dreaming prices for your pigs. Merrick: O Warp, You should have seen Vine crying! The moon, he said, The silver moon! Just like an onion 'twas To stir the water in his eyes. Sollers: He's left A puddle of his tears where he was droopt Over the table. Vine: There's to be no ruin?-- But what's the word of a molecatcher, to crow So ringing over a dowser's word? Warp: I'll tell you. These dowsers live on lies: my trade's the truth. I can read moles, and the way they've dug their journeys, Where you'ld not see a wrinkle. Vine: And he knows The buried water. Warp: There's always buried water, If you prod deep enough. A dowser finds Because the whole earth's floating, like a raft. What does he know? A twitching in his thews; A dog asleep knows that much. What I know I've learnt, and if I'd learnt it wrong, I'ld starve. And if I'm right about the grubbing moles, Won't I be right for news of walking men? Merrick: Of course you're right. Let's put the whole thing by, And have a pleasant drink. Shale (to Mrs HUFF): You must be tired With all this story. Shall we be off for home? Huff: You brass! You don't go now with her! She's mine: You gave her up. Shale: And you made nothing of her. (To Mrs Huff) Come on. Mrs Huff: Warp, will you do a thing for me? Warp: A hundred things. Mrs Huff: Then slap me these cur-dogs. Warp: I will. Where will I slap them, and which first? 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: