CHRISTY. _beginning to be pleased._—It’s a long story; you’d be destroyed listening.
WIDOW QUIN. Don’t be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull?
CHRISTY. _shy but flattered._—It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divil’s patch of a field.
WIDOW QUIN. And you went asking money of him, or making talk of getting a wife would drive him from his farm?
CHRISTY. I did not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and “You squinting idiot,” says he, “let you walk down now and tell the priest you’ll wed the Widow Casey in a score of days.”
CHRISTY. _with horror._—A walking terror from beyond the hills, and she two score and five years, and two hundredweights and five pounds in the weighing scales, with a limping leg on her, and a blinded eye, and she a woman of noted misbehaviour with the old and young.
GIRLS. _clustering round him, serving him._—Glory be!
WIDOW QUIN. And what did he want driving you to wed with her? [_She takes a bit of the chicken._]
CHRISTY. _eating with growing satisfaction._—He was letting on I was wanting a protector from the harshness of the world, and he without a thought the whole while but how he’d have her hut to live in and her gold to drink.
WIDOW QUIN. There’s maybe worse than a dry hearth and a widow woman and your glass at night. So you hit him then?
CHRISTY. _getting almost excited._—I did not. “I won’t wed her,” says I, “when all know she did suckle me for six weeks when I came into the world, and she a hag this day with a tongue on her has the crows and seabirds scattered, the way they wouldn’t cast a shadow on her garden with the dread of her curse.”
WIDOW QUIN. _teasingly._—That one should be right company.
SARA. _eagerly._—Don’t mind her. Did you kill him then?
CHRISTY. “She’s too good for the like of you,” says he, “and go on now or I’ll flatten you out like a crawling beast has passed under a dray.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. “Go on,” says he, “or I’ll have the divil making garters of your limbs tonight.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. [_He sits up, brandishing his mug._]
CHRISTY. _impressively._—With that the sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face. “God have mercy on your soul,” says he, lifting a scythe; “or on your own,” says I, raising the loy.