JIM: While the cat calleevers the hills of Back-o’-Beyont, The rats make free of the rick: and so, you doubled, As soon as my hurdies were turned on Krindlesyke, And settled yourself in the ingle? JUDITH (_starting up, and facing him_): Jim! JIM: Ay, Jim-- No other, Judith. I’ll be bound you weren’t Just looking to see me: you seem overcome By the unexpected pleasure. Your pardon, mistress, If I intrude. By crikes! But I’m no ghost To set you adither: you don’t see anything wrong-- No, no! What should you see? I startled you. Happen I look a wee bit muggerishlike-- A ragtag hipplety-clinch: but I’ve been travelling Mischancy roads; and I’m fair muggert-up. Yet, why should that stagnate you? Where’s the sense Of expecting a mislucket man like me To be as snod and spruce as a young shaver? But I’m all right: there’s naught amiss with Jim, Except too much of nothing in his belly. A good square meal, and a pipe, and a decent night’s rest, And I’ll be fit as a fiddle. I’ve hardly slept ... Well, now I’m home, I’ll make myself at home. (_He seizes the loaf of bread from the table; hacks off a hunch with his jack-knife; and wolfs it ravenously._) JUDITH: Home? You’ve come home, Jim? JIM: Nay, I’m my own fetch! God’s truth! there’s little else but skin and bone Beneath these tatters: just a two-legged boggart, With naught but wind to fill my waim--small wonder You’re maiselt, to see a scarecrow stottering in-- For plover’s eggs and heather-broth don’t sleek A wrinkled hide or swell a scrankit belly. But still, what should there be to flabbergast you About a man’s returning to his home? Naught wrong in coming home, I hope? By gox, A poor lad can’t come home, but he’s cross-questioned, And stared at like ... Why do you stare like that? It’s I should be agape, to find you here: But no, I’m not surprised: you can’t surprise me: I’m a travelled man: I’ve seen the world; and so, Don’t look for gratitude. My eyes were opened, Once and for all, by Phœbe and you, that day-- Nigh twenty-year since: and they’ve not been shut ... By gum, that’s so! it seems like twenty-year Since I’d a wink of sleep ... And, anyway, I’ve heard the story, all the goings-on; And a pretty tale it is: for I’d a drink, A sappy-crack with that old windywallops, Sep Shanks, in a bar at Bellingham: and he let out How you’d crawled back to Krindlesyke with your daughter-- Our daughter, I should say: and she, no less, Married to Peter’s son: though how the deuce You picked him up, is more that I can fashion. Sep had already had his fill of cheerers, Before I met him; and that last rum-hot Was just the drop too much: and he got fuddled. Ay, Sep was mortal-clay, the addled egg: And I couldn’t make head or tail of his hiccuping, Though he tried to make himself plain: he did his best, Did Sep: I’ll say that for him--tried so hard To make himself plain, he got us both chucked out: