_Midsummer morning. EZRA BARRASFORD sits crouched over the fire. ELIZA BARRASFORD, looking old and worn, and as if dazed by a shock, comes from the ben, or inner room, with a piece of paper in her hand. As she sinks to a chair to recover her breath, the paper flutters to the floor, where she lets it lie, and sits staring before her._ ELIZA: So that’s the last. EZRA: The last? The last of what? ELIZA: The last of your sons to leave you. Jim’s gone now. EZRA: Gone where, the tyke? After his wife, I’ll warrant. ’Twill take him all his time to catch her up: She’s three months’ start of him. The gonneril, To be forsaken on his wedding-day: And the ninneyhammer let her go--he let her! Do you reckon I’d let a woman I’d fetched home Go gallivanting off at her own sweet will? No wench I’d ringed, and had a mind to hold, Should quit the steading till she was carried, feet-first And shoulder-high, packed snug in a varnished box. The noodle couldn’t stand up to a woman’s tongue: And so, lightheels picked up her skirts, and flitted, Before he’d even bedded her--skelped off Like a ewe turned lowpy-dyke; and left the nowt, The laughing-stock of the countryside. He should Have used his fist to teach her manners. She seemed To have the fondy flummoxed, till his wits Were fozy as a frosted swede. Do you reckon I’d let a lass ... ELIZA: And yet, six lads have left you, Without a by-your-leave. EZRA: Six lads? ELIZA: Your sons. EZRA: Ay ... but they’d not the spunk to scoot till I Was blind and crippled. The scurvy rats skidaddled As the old barn-roof fell in. While I’d my sight, They’d scarce the nerve to look me in the eye, The blinking, slinking squealers! ELIZA: Ay, we’re old. The heat this morning seems to suffocate me, My head’s a skep of buzzing bees; and I pant Like an old ewe under a dyke, when the sun gives scarce An inch of shade. You harp on sight: but eyes Aren’t everything: my sight’s a girl’s: and yet I’m old and broken: you’ve broken me, among you. I’d count the pens of a hanging hawk: yet my eyes Have saved me little: they’ve never seen to the bottom Of the blackness of men’s hearts. The very sons Of my body, I reckoned to ken through and through, As every mother thinks she knows her sons, Have been pitch night to me. We never learn. I thought I’d got by heart each turn and twist Of all Jim’s stupid cunning: but even he’s Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left; All gone in bitterness--firstborn to reckling: Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve: And now Jim ends ... EZRA: You mean Jim’s gone for good? ELIZA: For good and all: he’s taken Peter’s road.