If it didn't, maybe all knows a widow woman has buried her children and destroyed her man is a wiser comrade for a young lad than a girl the like of you who'd go helter-skeltering after any man would let you a wink upon the road.

PEGEEN breaking out into wild rage. And you'll say that, Widow Quin, and you gasping with the rage you had racing the hill beyond to look on his face.

WIDOW QUIN laughing derisively. Me, is it! Well, Father Reilly has cuteness to divide you now. She pulls Christy up. There's great temptation in a man did slay his da, and we'd best be going, young fellow; so rise up and come with me.

PEGEEN seizing his arm. He'll not stir. He's pot-boy in this place and I'll not have him stolen off and kidnabbed while himself's abroad.

WIDOW QUIN. It'd be a crazy pot-boy'd lodge him in the shebeen where he works by day, so you'd have a right to come on, young fellow, till you see my little houseen, a perch off on the rising hill.

PEGEEN. Wait till morning, Christy Mahon, wait till you lay eyes on her leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in order her place at all.

WIDOW QUIN. When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching or mowing or shearing a sheep.

PEGEEN with noisy scorn. It's true the Lord God formed you to contrive indeed! Doesn't the world know you reared a black ram at your own breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of a Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesn't the world know you've been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a mountain goat you'd meet lepping the hills?

WIDOW QUIN with amusement. Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do you hear the way she'll be rating at your own self when a week is by?

PEGEEN to Christy. Don't heed her. Tell her to go on into her pigsty and not plague us here.

WIDOW QUIN. I'm going; but he'll come with me.

PEGEEN shaking him. Are you dumb, young fellow?

CHRISTY timidly to Widow Quin. God increase you; but I'm potboy in this place, and it's here I'd liefer stay.

PEGEEN triumphantly. Now you've heard him, and go on from this.

WIDOW QUIN looking round the room. It's lonesome this hour crossing the hill, and if he won't come along with me, I'd have a right maybe to stop this night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike, and himself can lie by the hearth.

PEGEEN short and fiercely. Faith I won't. Quit off or I will send you now.

WIDOW QUIN gathering her shawl up. Well, it's a terror to be aged a score! To Christy. God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or there's right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheep-skin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen. She goes out.

CHRISTY going to Pegeen, as she bolts door. What's that she's after saying?

PEGEEN. Lies and blather, you've no call to mind. Well isn't Shawn Keogh an impudent fellow to send up spying on me? Wait till I lay hands on him. Let him wait, I'm saying.

CHRISTY. And you're not wedding him at all?

PEGEEN.