VASHTI. Be you a-going to set on I, too, May, now that you be comed home. ’Tis poor work for an old woman like I. MAY. [_As though to herself_.] And as I was laid beneath the hedge—“’Tis cold as my limbs is, now,” I says, “but I shall be warm this night.” And the pangs what was in the body of me did fairly quail I—“’Tis my fill of victuals as I shall soon put within,” thinks I. And they was laid a bit. The bleakness of the tempest fell on I, but “I shan’t feel lonesome no longer than this hour,” I telled me. For to my thinking, Steve, he was waiting all the time till I should be comed back. And Dorry, too. There ’tis. [_A long silence_. MAY. I’d have been content to bide with the door shut—so long as it was shut with they two and me inside the room—th’ old woman—well, I count I shouldn’t have took many thought for she—she could have bided in her place if she’d had a mind—I’d have set me down, when once my clothes was decent and clean, and put my hands to the work and made a tidy wife for Steve, as good nor better than that there dressed-up thing out yonder—And bred Dorry up the right way, too, I would. But ’tis done with now, so ’tis. VASHTI. [_As though to herself_.] And when ’tis morning and she gets her down—“There, ’tis my girl as is mistress here, I’ll say to her—and ’tis my girl as shall sit cup end of the table—and you get you to the fire corner and bide there, like the poor old woman as you be, spite that you do slip about so spry on the wicked old legs of you.” MAY. And I could set she back in her place, too, that tricked-up, flashy thing over the way. I’ve but to climb the stairs and clap my hand on Steve—“Get you from your dreams,” I have got but to say, “the woman what’s yourn be comed home. Her have tasted the cup of death, very near, and her have been a-thirst and an hungered. But her has carried summat for you in her heart all the way what you wouldn’t find in the heart of t’other, no, not if you was to cut it open and search it through.” And the right belongs to I to shut the door on t’other hussey, holding Steve to I till death divides we. VASHTI. Going on the road I seed the eyes of they blinking as I did pass by. “And may the light from out the thunder cloud fall upon you,” I says to them, “for ’tis a poor old woman as I be what has lost her child; and what’s that to you if so be as the shoes on her feet be broken or no? ’Tis naked as the toes of you shall go, that hour when the days of this world shall be rolled by. Ah, ’tis naked and set on the lake of burning fire as the hoofs of you shall run!”