ANNIE. O, let me be, all of you! I declare, I don’t know which way to look, I don’t. STEVE. I’ll show you, Annie, then. ROSE. [_To_ GEORGE.] Well, Mr. Davis, you don’t seem over bright this morning. STEVE. ’Tis with the nerves as he be took! DORRY. Look at what he’s wearing in his buttonhole, Rosie. ROSE. ’Tis kept beautiful and fresh. STEVE. Come on, come on, all of you. ’Tis time we was at the church. ROSE. Hark to him! He’s in a rare hurry for to get out of the house to-day. GEORGE. Bain’t the old lady a-coming? JANE. That she bain’t, the old drinking gipsy—’tis at the spirits as her got in the night—and put away very near the best part of a bottle. Now she’s best left to sleep it off, she be. STEVE. Come on, George. Come, Dorry. DORRY. O, isn’t it a pity as Granny will get at the drink, Mr. Davis? And isn’t Miss Sims nice in her white dress? And don’t Dad look smiling and pleased? I never did know Dad smile like this afore. GEORGE. [_Heavily_.] Come on, Dorry—you take hold of me. You and me, we’ll keep nigh one to t’other this day, won’t us? ROSE. [_Calling from outside_.] Come on, Mr. Davis. [_They all go out_. ACT III.—Scene 2. _Nearly an hour later_. _The cottage room is full of sunlight_. VASHTI REED _is awake and gazing vacantly about her from the same chair by the fire_. _Someone knocks repeatedly at the door from outside_. VASHTI. And ’tis no bit of rest as I gets for my bones, but they must come and hustle I and call I from the dreams which was soft. [_The knocking is heard again_. VASHTI. And I up and says to they, “Ah, and you would hustle a poor old woman what’s never harmed so much as a hair out of the ugly heads of you. You would hunt and drive of her till she be very nigh done to death. But there shall come a day when you shall be laid down and a-taking of your bit of rest, and the thing what you knows of shall get up upon you and smite you till you do go screeching from the house, and fleeing to the uttermost part of the land—whilst me and mine—” [_The door opens and_ HARRY MOSS _enters_. HARRY. Beg pardon, old Missis, but I couldn’t make no one hear me. VASHTI. Seeing as them be sick of the abomination which was inside of they. [_Perceiving_ HARRY.] Well, and what be you as is comed into this room? HARRY. ’Tis Moss as I be called, old Missis. And as I was a-going by this place, I thought as I’d look in a moment, just for to ask how ’twas with May. VASHTI. They be all gone out from the house. All of them. They be in clothes what do lie in boxes most of the time with lumps of white among they. Them be set out in the best as they has, and in grand things of many colours. There ’tis. HARRY. And be you th’ old lady what’s Steve’s mother? VASHTI. I be not, sir. ’Tis mother to May as I be. May, what’s comed back, and what’ll set t’other old vixen in her place soon as they get home. HARRY. Then May, she be gone out, too, have her?