BELL: I’m better here. I’ll soon Be fit again ... Bell isn’t done for, yet: She’s a tough customer--she’s always been A banging, bobberous bletherskite, has Bell-- No fushenless, brashy, mim-mouthed mealy-face, Fratished and perished in the howl-o’-winter. No wind has ever blown too etherish, Too snell to fire her blood: she’s always relished A gorly, gousty, blusterous day that sets Her body alow and birselling like a whinfire. But what a windyhash! My wit’s wool-gathering; And I’m waffling like a ... But I’d best be stepping, Before he comes: I’ve far to travel to-night: And I’m not so young ... And Michael mustn’t find His tinker-mother, squatted by the hearth, Nursing a bloody head. But, mind you, Judith: I stumbled; and I hurt my side in falling: Whatever they may say, you stick to that: Swear that I told you that upon my oath-- So help me God, and all--my bible-oath. I’m better ... already ... I fancy ... and I’ll go Before ... What was I saying? Well, old hob, I little ettled I’d look on you again. The times I’ve polished you, the elbow-grease I’ve wasted on you: but I never made You shine like that ... You’re winking red eyes at me: And well you may, to see ... I little guessed You’d see me sitting ... I’ve watched many fires Since last I sat beside this hearth--good fires: Coal, coke, and peat, but wood-fires in the main. There’s naught like izles for dancing flames and singing: Birch kindles best, and has the liveliest flames: But elm just smoulders--it’s the coffin-wood ... Coffins? Who muttered coffins? Let’s not talk Of coffins, Judith ... Shut in a black box! They couldn’t keep old Ezra in: the lid Flew off; and old granddaddy sat up, girning ... They had to screw him down ... And Solomon Slept with his fathers ... I wonder he could sleep, After the razzle-dazzle ... Concubines! ’Twould take a pyramid to keep him down! And me ... That tumble’s cracked the bell ... not stopt The crazy clapper, seemingly ... But, coffins-- Let’s talk no more of coffins: what have I To do with coffins? Let us talk of fires: I’ve always loved a fire: I’d set the world Alow for my delight, if it would burn. It’s such a soggy, sodden world to-day, I’m duberous I could kindle it with an izle: It might just smoulder with muckle funeral-plumes Of smoke, like coffin-elder ... And the blaze-- The biggest flare-up ever I set eyes on, It was a kind of funeral, you might say-- A fiery, flaming, roaring funeral, A funeral such as I ... but no such luck For me in this world--likely, in the next! And anyway, it wouldn’t be much fun, If I couldn’t watch it, myself ... Ay, Long Nick Salkeld, And his old woman, Zillah, died together, The selfsame day, within an hour or so. ’Twas on Spadeadam Waste we’d camped that time ... And kenning how they loved their caravan, And how they’d hate to leave it, or be parted From one another, even by a foot of earth, We laid them out, together, side by side, In the van, as they’d slept in it, night after night,