MIKE MCINERNEY. And after that again! I'd sooner than ten pound in my hand, I to know that my shadow and my ghost will not be knocking about with your shadow and your ghost, and the both of us waiting our time. I'd sooner be delayed in Purgatory! Now, have you anything to say?
MICHAEL MISKELL. I have everything to say, if I had but the time to say it!
MIKE MCINERNEY. [_Sitting up._] Let me up out of this till I'll choke you!
MICHAEL MISKELL. You scolding pauper you!
MIKE MCINERNEY. [_Shaking his fist at him._] Wait a while!
MICHAEL MISKELL. [_Shaking his fist._] Wait a while yourself!
[_Mrs. Donohoe comes in with a parcel. She is a countrywoman with a frilled cap and a shawl. She stands still a minute. The two old men lie down and compose themselves._]
MRS. DONOHOE. They bade me come up here by the stair. I never was in this place at all. I don't know am I right. Which now of the two of ye is Mike McInerney?
MIKE MCINERNEY. Who is it is calling me by my name?
MRS. DONOHOE. Sure amn't I your sister, Honor McInerney that was, that is now Honor Donohoe.
MIKE MCINERNEY. So you are, I believe. I didn't know you till you pushed anear me. It is time indeed for you to come see me, and I in this place five year or more. Thinking me to be no credit to you, I suppose, among that tribe of the Donohoes. I wonder they to give you leave to come ask am I living yet or dead?
MRS. DONOHOE. Ah, sure, I buried the whole string of them. Himself was the last to go. [_Wipes her eyes._] The Lord be praised he got a fine natural death. Sure we must go through our crosses. And he got a lovely funeral; it would delight you to hear the priest reading the Mass. My poor John Donohoe! A nice clean man, you couldn't but be fond of him. Very severe on the tobacco he was, but he wouldn't touch the drink.
MIKE MCINERNEY. And is it in Curranroe you are living yet?
MRS. DONOHOE. It is so. He left all to myself. But it is a lonesome thing the head of a house to have died!
MIKE MCINERNEY. I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?
MRS. DONOHOE. Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have; a few acres of grass land ... the grass does be very sweet that grows among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or cockles maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but cockles is fit to put before the Lord!