I hope he has brought Delia’s fortune with him safe, for fear her people might go back on the bargain and I after making it. Trouble enough I had making it.
[_PATRICK opens the door and MICHAEL comes in._
What kept you, Michael? We were looking out for you this long time.
I went round by the priest’s house to bid him be ready to marry us to-morrow.
He said it was a very nice match, and that he was never better pleased to marry any two in his parish than myself and Delia Cahel.
[_MICHAEL puts bag on table and goes over and leans against chimney-jamb. BRIDGET, who has been all this time examining the clothes, pulling the seams and trying the lining of the pockets, etc., puts the clothes on the dresser._
[_Getting up and taking the bag in his hand and turning out the money._]
Yes, I made the bargain well for you, Michael. Old John Cahel would sooner have kept a share of this a while longer. ‘Let me keep the half of it until the first boy is born,’ says he. ‘You will not,’ says I. ‘Whether there is or is not a boy, the whole hundred pounds must be in Michael’s hands before he brings your daughter to the house.’ The wife spoke to him then, and he gave in at the end.
You seem well pleased to be handling the money, Peter.
Indeed, I wish I had had the luck to get a hundred pounds, or twenty pounds itself, with the wife I married.
Well, if I didn’t bring much I didn’t get much. What had you the day I married you but a flock of hens and you feeding them, and a few lambs and you driving them to the market at Ballina. [_She is vexed and bangs a jug on the dresser._] If I brought no fortune I worked it out in my bones, laying down the baby, Michael that is standing there now, on a stook of straw, while I dug the potatoes, and never asking big dresses or anything but to be working.
That is true, indeed. [_He pats her arm._
Leave me alone now till I ready the house for the woman that is to come into it.
You are the best woman in Ireland, but money is good, too. [_He begins handling the money again and sits down._] I never thought to see so much money within my four walls. We can do great things now we have it. We can take the ten acres of land we have a chance of since Jamsie Dempsey died, and stock it. We will go to the fair of Ballina to buy the stock. Did Delia ask any of the money for her own use, Michael?