Dorry.  Was my own mammy a trolloping gipsy, Gran?

Jane. [Beginning to brush Steve’s coat.] Ah, much in the same pattern as th’ old woman what’s drunk asleep against the fireside.  Here, button up them gloves, ’tis time we was off.

Dorry.  I do like Miss Sims.  She do have nice things on her.  When I grows up I’d like to look as she do, so I would.

Steve. [To Jane.] There, Mother, that’ll do.  I’d best put him on now.

Jane. [Holding out the coat for him.] Well, and you be got yourself up rare smart, Steve.

Steve.  ’Tis rare smart as I be feeling, Mother.  I’m all a kind of a dazzle within of me, same as ’tis with the sun upon the snow out yonder.

Jane.  Why, look you, there’s George a-coming up the path already.

Dorry.  He’s wearing of the flower what Rosie gived him last night.

Steve. [Opening the door.] Good morning, George.  A first class New Year to you.  You’re welcome, if ever a man was.

Jane.  You bide where you do stand, George, till your feet is dry.  My floor was fresh wiped over this morning.

George. [Standing on the door mat.] All right, Mrs. Browning.  Don’t you fluster.  Good morning, Dorry.  How be you to-day, Steve?

Jane.  Dorry, come you upstairs along with me and get your coat put on, so as your frock bain’t crushed.

Dorry.  O, I wish I could go so that my nice frock was seen and no coat.

[They go upstairs.  George rubs his feet on the mat and comes into the room, walking up and down once or twice restlessly and in evident distress of mind.

Steve. [Who has lit a pipe and is smoking.] Why, George, be you out of sorts this morning?  You don’t look up to much, and that’s the truth.

George. [Stopping before Steve.] Hark you, Steve.  ’Tis on my mind to ask summat of you.  Did you have much speech with the poor thing what you took in from the snow last night?

Steve.  No, George, and that I didn’t.  Her was mostly in a kind of drunken sleep all the time, and naught to be got out from she.  Mother, her tried.  But ’twas like trying to get water from the pump yonder, when ’tis froze.

George.  Your mother’s a poor one at melting ice, Steve, and ’tis what we all knows.

Steve.  Ah, ’twasn’t much as we could do for the likes of she—­what was a regular roadster.  Bad herbs, all of them.  And if it hadn’t been so as ’twas my wedding eve, this one shouldn’t have set foot inside of the house.  But ’tis a season when a man’s took a bit soft and foolish, like, the night afore his marriage.  Bain’t that so, George?

George.  And when was it, Steve, as she went off from here?

Steve.  That I couldn’t rightly say, George, but I counts ’twas just upon daybreak.  And ’twas Dorry what seed her off the place and gived her a piece of bread to take along of her.