Doesn't Jim live here, now?

BELL:
You're not sent back by the penitent, then, to pay
The interest on the loan he took that morning
In an absent-minded fit--and pretty tales
Are tarradiddles? Jim's not mucked that step
In my time: Ezra thought he'd followed you.

JUDITH:
Me?

BELL:
You're Jim's wife--though you've not taken his name--
Stuck to your own, and rightly: I'd not swap mine
For any man's: but, you're the bride the bridegroom
Lost before bedtime?

JUDITH:
No, 'twas Phoebe Martin:
And dead, this fifteen-year: she didn't last
A twelvemonth after--it proved too much for her,
The shock; for all her heart was set on Jim.

BELL:
Poor fool: though I've no cause to call her so;
For women are mostly fools, where men come in.
You're not the vanished bride? Then who've I blabbed
The family-secrets to, unsnecking the cupboard,
And setting the skeleton rattling his bones? I took you
For one of us, who'd ken our pretty ways;
And reckoned naught I could tell of Jim to Jim's wife
Could startle her, though she'd no notion of it.

JUDITH:
I took you for Jim's wife.

BELL:
Me! I'm a fool--
But never fool enough to wear a ring
For any man.

JUDITH:
Yet, Mistress Barrasford?

BELL:
They call me that: but I'm Bell Haggard still;
And will be to the day I die, and after:
Though, happen, there'll be marriage and giving in marriage
In hell; for old Nick's ever been matchmaker.
In that particular, heaven would suit me better:
But I've travelled the wrong road too far to turn now.

JUDITH:
Then you're not the mother of Michael Barrasford?

BELL:
And who's the brass to say he's not my son?
I'm no man's wife: but what's to hinder me
From being a mother?

JUDITH:
Then Jim is his father?

BELL:
And what's it got to do with you, the man
I chose for my son's father? Chose--God help us!
That's how we women gammon ourselves. Deuce kens
The almighty lot choice has to do with it!

JUDITH:
It wasn't Jim, then?

BELL:
Crikey! You're not blate
Of asking questions: I've not been so riddled
Since that old egg-with-whiskers committed me.
Why harp on Jim? I've not clapped eyes on Jim,
Your worship; though I fear I must plead guilty
To some acquaintance with the family,
As you might put it; seeing that Jim's brother
Is my son's father; though how it came to happen,
The devil only kenned; and he'