Page:Five Russian plays and one Ukrainian.pdf/65

Rh : Your ugliness gets more beautiful every day.


 * Will you be a hundred years old the day after to-morrow?


 * What? Has she been merry-making all this time?


 * Still the same success with the goats? Ah, the rogue knows how to make her warts suit her face. She knows the scents that please the long tails.


 * Why don’t you speak, you stockfish?


 * She’s collecting herself.

(holds a live log under the witch's nose): What’s it smell of? Eh? What’s it smell of? (Witch hisses. All laugh.) What, don’t you like it, you big-faced sorceress?


 * Listen, you rogue. Last night our fool had a quite extraordinary dream. First he dreamed that he, a fool, had been appointed to a terribly responsible post. Well, so far there’s nothing extraordinary, that happens all round us every day, but after that (The Arab boy enters with a card on a silver tray. General consternation.)

(astonished): Well, this is the last thing I