[_She gets up_, _feels down the wall in a familiar way for the bellows—blows up the fire and puts some coal on it gently_. _Then she draws forward a chair and sits down before it_. MAY. [_Muttering to herself_.] ’Tis my own hearth when ’tis all said and done. [_She turns up the front of her skirt and warms herself_, _looking sharply at_ VASHTI REED _now and then_. [_Presently_ VASHTI’S _eyes open_, _resting_, _at first unseeingly_, _and then with recognition_, _on_ MAY’S _face_. VASHTI. So you be comed back, May. I always knowed as you would. MAY. How did you know ’twas me, then? VASHTI. ’Cause I knowed. There ’tis. MAY. I be that changed from the times when I would sit a-warming of myself by this here fire. VASHTI. Ah, and be you changed, May? My eyes don’t see nothing of it, then. MAY. Ah, I be got into an ugly old woman now, mother, and Steve—Steve, he looked in the face of I and didn’t so much as think who ’twas. “Get off to the drunken sleep of you and to your dreams.” ’Twas that what he did say to I. VASHTI. Your old mother do know better nor Steve. Ah, ’tweren’t in no shroud as I seed you, May, nor yet with the sod upon the face of you, but stepping, stepping up and down on the earth, through the water what layed on the roads, and on the dry where there be high places, and in the grass of the meadows. That’s how ’twas as I did see you, May. MAY. And I would like to know how ’twas as Steve saw I. VASHTI. Ah, and there was they as did buzz around as thick as waspes in summer time and as said, “She be under ground and rotting now—that her be.” And they seed in I but a poor old woman what was sleeping in the chimney corner, with no hearing to I. “Rotting yourself,” I says, and I rears up sudden, “She be there as a great tree and all the leaves of it full out—and you—snakes in the grass, snakes in the grass, all of you!” There ’tis. MAY. [_Mockingly_.] “It’s a good thought, bain’t it, Annie, that to-morrow this time there won’t be no need for us to part?” And in the days when I was a young woman and all the bloom of I upon me, ’twouldn’t have been once as he’d have looked on such as her. VASHTI. And ’tis full of bloom and rare fine and handsome as you appear now, May, leastways to my old eyes. And when you goes up to Steve and shows yourself, I take it the door’ll be shut in the face of the mealy one what they’ve all been so took up with this long while. I count that ’twill and no mistake. So ’tis. MAY. [_Fiercely_.] Hark you here, Mother, and ’tis to be wed to-morrow as they be! Wed—the both of them, the both of them! And me in my flesh, and wife to Steve! “Can I cover you up with a bit of old sack or summat?” Old sack! When there be a coverlet with feathers to it stretched over where he do lie upstairs. “I’ll let you out when ’tis morning.” Ah, you will, will you, Steve Browning? Us’ll see how ’twill be when ’tis morning—Us’ll see, just won’t us then!