_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring the pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat and taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting out the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the garden died.
_Mike McInerney:_ I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it? Is that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is so, the way you will be tasty coming in among the neighbours at Curranroe.
_Mike McInerney:_ My joy you are! It is well you earned me! Let me up out of this! (He sits up and spreads out the clothes and tries on coat.) That now is a good frieze coat ... and a hat in the fashion ... (_He puts on hat._)
_Michael Miskell:_ (_Alarmed._) And is it going out of this you are, Mike McInerney?
_Mike McInerney:_ Don't you hear I am going? To Curranroe I am going. Going I am to a place where I will get every good thing!
_Michael Miskell:_ And is it to leave me here after you you will?
_Mike McInerney:_ (_In a rising chant._) Every good thing! The goat and the kid are there, the sheep and the lamb are there, the cow does be running and she coming to be milked! Ploughing and seed sowing, blossom at Christmas time, the cuckoo speaking through the dark days of the year! Ah, what are you talking about? Wheat high in hedges, no talk about the rent! Salmon in the rivers as plenty as turf! Spending and getting and nothing scarce! Sport and pleasure, and music on the strings! Age will go from me and I will be young again. Geese and turkeys for the hundreds and drink for the whole world!
_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, Mike, is it truth you are saying, you to go from me and to leave me with rude people and with townspeople, and with people of every parish in the union, and they having no respect for me or no wish for me at all!
_Mike McInerney:_ Whist now and I'll leave you ... my pipe (_hands it over_); and I'll engage it is Honor Donohoe won't refuse to be sending you a few ounces of tobacco an odd time, and neighbours coming to the fair in November or in the month of May.
_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, what signifies tobacco? All that I am craving is the talk. There to be no one at all to say out to whatever thought might be rising in my innate mind! To be lying here and no conversible person in it would be the abomination of misery!
