SHINGLE-SHORT
—How can they others keep content?
It don’t seem somehow hardly fair
To give me such a extry share?
Take Missis, now:—can’t beat her bread,
Never be lazy till she’s dead,
An’ keeps account-books in her head:
Yet, if she work’d till Kingdom Come,
Could she make that? Suppose, some day,
I show’d her? She’d be struck, I lay!
“You do that, Barney?” p’raps she’d say—
Or p’raps delight ’ud keep her dumb?
Not much, it wouldn’t! Out she’d spit
In them tight tones, as if she bit
(I hear her), “What’s the good of it?”
That wasn’t Missis speakin’, sure....?
(Timidly.)
....Missis!
You loony! she ain’t here.
Said it yourself like, to yourself.
Wish I hadn’t then,—did sound clear.
....What’s gone an’ happen’d? feel all queer—
Silly, like: stopp’d inside o’ me,
Like I was switch’d off suddenly,
Like somethin’ right deep down got hit,
Bursted, or somethin’.—Wait a bit....
Here, buck up! “What’s the....Good of it?”
(Loudly.)
Let be! To every mouth its mess!
This ain’t old Missis’s business!
22
