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,