[SHALE comes in. HUFF glares at him speechless, but with wrath evidently
working.]
Shale:
Where's the joker? You, is it? Here's hot news
You've brought us; all the valley's hissing aloud,
And makes as much of you falling into it
As a pail of water would of a glowing coal.
Sollers:
Don't you start burbling too, Shale.
Shale:
That's the word!
Burbling, simmering, ay and bumpy-boiling:
All the women are mobbed together close
Under the witan-trees, and their full minds
Boil like so many pans slung on a fire.
Why, starlings trooping in a copse in fall
Could make no scandal like it.
Merrick:
What is it, man?
Shale:
End of the World! The flying star! End of the World!
Sollers:
They don't believe it though?
Shale:
What? the whole place
Has gone just randy over it!
Merrick:
Hold your noise!
Sollers:
I shall be daft if this goes on.
Shale:
Ay, so?
The End of the World's been here? You look as though
You'd startled lately. And there's the virtuous man!
How would End of the World suit our good Huff,
Our old crab-verjuice Huff?
HUFF (seizing the DOWSER and bringing him up in front of SHALE):
Look at him there!
This is the man I told you of when you
Were talking small of sin.
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