BELL: And you’re too proud-- Too proud a prig to stoop? Did you expect The box to bounce itself into your arms, The moment it heard your step? PETER: I dared not stoop: For there was someone lying on the bed, Asleep, I think. BELL: You think? PETER: I only saw A hunched-up shoulder, poking through the curtain. BELL: A woman? PETER: Ay, my mother, or her fetch. I couldn’t take my eyes from that hunched shoulder-- It looked so queer--till you called my name. BELL: You said Your mother was out. But, we’ve no time to potter. To think I’ve borne a son to a calf that’s fleyed Of a sleeping woman’s back--his minney’s, and all! Collops and chitterlings, if she’s asleep, The job’s the easier done. There’s not a woman, Or a woman’s fetch, would scare me from good gold. I’ll get the box. (_She steals softly into the other room, and is gone for some time. The others await her expectantly in silence. Presently she comes out bareheaded and empty-handed. Without a word, she goes to the window, and pulls down the blind; then closes the outer door: PETER and MICHAEL watching her in amazement._) EZRA: So Jim, the fox, has cheated Peter, the fox-- And vixen and cub, to boot! But, he made off Only this morning: and the scent’s still fresh. You’ll ken the road he’d take, the fox’s track-- A thief to catch a thief! He’s lifted all: But, if you cop him, I’ll give you half, although ’Twill scarcely leave enough to bury us With decency, when we have starved to death, Your mother and I. Run, lad: there’s fifty-sovereign! And mind you clout and clapperclaw the cull: Spanghew his jacket, when you’ve riped his pockets-- The scurvy scrunt! BELL: Silence, old misery: There’s a dead woman lying in the house-- And you can prate of money! PETER: Dead! EZRA: Eliza! BELL: I found the body, huddled on the bed, Already cold and stiffening. EZRA: I thought I heard ... Yet, she set out for Rawridge, to fetch a man ... I felt her passing, in my very bones. I knew her foot: you cannot hear a step For forty-year, and mistake it, though the spring’s Gone out of it, and it’s turned to a shuffle, it’s still The same footfall. Why didn’t she answer me? She chattered enough, before she went--such havers! Words tumbling from her lips in a witless jumble. Contrary, to the last, she wouldn’t answer: But crept away, like a wounded pheasant, to die Alone. She’s gone before me, after all-- And she, so hale; while I was crutched and crippled. I haven’t looked on her face for eleven-year: But she was bonnie, when I saw her first, That morning at the fair--so fresh and pink.