WIDOW QUIN -- [loudly.] Well, you're the lot. Stir up now and give him his breakfast. (To Christy.) Come here to me (she puts him on bench beside her while the girls make tea and get his breakfast) and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come, in place of grinning your ears off like the moon of May.
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 ****** 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."
WIDOW QUIN. And what kind was she?
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 ****** garters of your limbs tonight." "You will not if I can help it," says I. [He sits up, brandishing his mug.]
SARA. You were right surely.
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.
SUSAN. That's a grand story.
HONOR. He tells it lovely.
CHRISTY -- [flattered and confident, waving bone.] -- He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a lep to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. [He raises the chicken bone to his Adam'sapple.
GIRLS -- [together.] Well, you're a marvel! Oh, God bless you! You're the lad surely!
SUSAN. I'm thinking the Lord God sent him this road to make a second husband to the Widow Quin, and she with a great yearning to be wedded, though all dread her here. Lift him on her knee, Sara Tansey.
WIDOW QUIN. Don't tease him.
SARA -- [going over to dresser and counter very quickly, and getting two glasses and porter.] -- You're heroes surely, and let you drink a supeen with your arms linked like the outlandish lovers in the sailor's song. (She links their arms and gives them the glasses.) There now. Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law. [Brandishing the bottle.]
WIDOW QUIN. That's a right toast, Sara Tansey. Now Christy. [They drink with their arms linked, he drinking with his left hand, she with her right. As they are drinking, Pegeen Mike comes in with a milk can and stands aghast.
They all spring away from Christy. He goes down left. Widow Quin remains seated.]
PEGEEN -- [angrily, to Sara.] -- What is it you're wanting?
SARA -- [twisting her apron.] -- An ounce of tobacco.
PEGEEN. Have you tuppence?
SARA. I've forgotten my purse.
PEGEEN. Then you'd best be getting it and not fooling us here. (To the Widow Quin, with more elaborate scorn.) And what is it you're wanting, Widow Quin?
WIDOW QUIN -- [insolently.] A penn'orth of starch.
PEGEEN -- [breaking out.] -- And you without a white shift or a shirt in your whole family since the drying of the flood. I've no starch for the like of you, and let you walk on now to Killamuck.
WIDOW QUIN -- [turning to Christy, as she goes out with the girls.] -- Well, you're mighty huffy this day, Pegeen Mike, and, you young fellow, let you not forget the sports and racing when the noon is by. [They go out.]
PEGEEN -- [imperiously.] Fling out that rubbish and put them cups away.
(Christy tidies away in great haste). Shove in the bench by the wall. (He does so.) And hang that glass on the nail. What disturbed it at all?
CHRISTY -- [very meekly.] -- I was ****** myself decent only, and this a fine country for young lovely girls.
PEGEEN -- [sharply.] Whisht your talking of girls. [Goes to counter right.]
CHRISTY. Wouldn't any wish to be decent in a place . . .
PEGEEN. Whisht I'm saying.
CHRISTY -- [looks at her face for a moment with great misgivings, then as a last effort, takes up a loy, and goes towards her, with feigned assurance). --
It was with a loy the like of that I killed my father.
PEGEEN -- [still sharply.] -- You've told me that story six times since the dawn of day.
CHRISTY -- [reproachfully.] It's a queer thing you wouldn't care to be hearing it and them girls after walking four miles to be listening to me now.
PEGEEN -- [turning round astonished.] -- Four miles.