ELIZA: But, think of her, the bride, and her home-coming. JUDITH: I’ll go. ELIZA: You lose but little: too well I ken How little--I, who’ve dwelt this forty-year At Krindlesyke. JUDITH: Happen you never loved. ELIZA: I, too, was young, once, daughter. JUDITH: Ay: and yet, You’ve never tramped the road I’ve had to travel. God send it stretch not forty-year! ELIZA: I’ve come That forty-year. We’re out on the selfsame road, The three of us: but, she’s the stoniest bit To travel still--the bride just setting out, And stepping daintily down the lilylea. We’ve known the worst. JUDITH: But, she can keep the highway, While I must slink in the ditch, among the nettles. ELIZA: I’ve kept the hard road, daughter, forty-year: The ditch may be easier going, after all: Nettles don’t sting each other. JUDITH: Nay: but I’m not A ditch-born nettle, but, among the nettles, Only a woman, naked to every sting: And there are slugs and slithery toads and paddocks In the ditch-bottom; and their slimy touch Is worse to bear than any nettle ... ELIZA: Ay-- The pity of it! A maid blooms only once: And then, that a man should ruin ... But, you’ve your bairn: And bairns, while we can hold them safe in our arms, And they still need the breast, make up for much: For there’s a kind of comfort in their clinging, Though they only cling till they can stand alone. But yours is not a son. If I’d only had One daughter ... JUDITH: Well, you’ll have a daughter now. But we must go our way to--God kens where! Before Jim brings the bride home. You’ve your wish: Jim brings you home a daughter ... (_As she speaks, a step is heard, and EZRA BARRASFORD appears in the doorway. Turning to go, JUDITH meets him. She tries to pass him, but he clutches her arm; and she stands, dazed, while his fingers grope over her._)